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OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lto. 

TORONTO 



OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

ILLUSTRATING THE MASTERY 
OF NERVOUSNESS 



BY 

ROBERT S. CARROLL, M.D. 

Medical Director Highland Hospital, Asheville, 

North Carolina 

Author of "The Mastery of Nervousness," 
"The Soul in Suffering" 



JSeto gorfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1919 

All rights reserved 



"RC35/ 
.C'6$ 



Copyright, 1919 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 



Set up and electrotyped. Published, October, 1919 



NOV 26 1919 



©CI.A535882 



! 



HEARTILY— TO THE HOST OF US 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 
Our Friendly Nerves 1 

Illustrating the Capacity for Nervous Adjustment 

CHAPTER II 

The Neurotic 12 

Illustrating Damaging Nervous Overactivity 

CHAPTER III 

The Price of Nervousness 22 

Illustrating Misdirected Nervous Energy 

CHAPTER IV 
Wrecking a Generation 35 

Illustrating " The Enemy at the Gate " 

CHAPTER V 

The Nervously Damaged Mother 46 

Illustrating the Child Wrongly Started 

CHAPTER VI 
The Mess op Pottage 54 

Illustrating Nervous Inferiority Due to Eating-Errors 

CHAPTER VII 

The Crime of Inactivity 64 

Illustrating the Wreckage of the Pampered Body 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VIII 
Learning to Eat 70 

Illustrating the Potency of Diet 

CHAPTER IX 
The Man with the Hoe 34 

Illustrating the Therapy of Work 

CHAPTER X 
The Fine Art of Play 94 

Illustrating Ke-creation Through Play 

CHAPTER XI 
The Tangled Skein _ 203 

Illustrating a Tragedy of Thought Selection 

CHAPTER XII 
The Troubled Sea H3 

Illustrating Emotional Tyranny 

CHAPTER XIII 
Willing Illness > 126 

Illustrating Willessness and Wilfulness 

CHAPTER XIV 
Untangling the Snarl 139 

Illustrating the Replacing of Fatalism by Truth 

CHAPTER XV 
From Fear to Faith .152 

Illustrating the Curative Power of Helpful Emotions 

CHAPTER XVI 
Judicious Hardening iq± 

Illustrating the Compelling of Health 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XVII 
The Sick Soul 173 

Illustrating the Sliding Moral Scale 

CHAPTER XVIII 

The Battle with Self 185 

Illustrating the Eecklessness that Disintegrates 

CHAPTER XIX 
The Suffering of Self-Pity 195 

Illustrating a Moral Surrender 

CHAPTER XX 

The Slave of Conscience . 207 

Illustrating Discord with Self 

CHAPTER XXI 
Catastrophe Creating Character 220 

Illustrating Disciplined Freedom 

CHAPTER XXII 
Finding the Victorious Self 232 

Illustrating a Medical Conversion 

CHAPTER XXIII 

The Triumph of Harmony 247 

Illustrating the Power of the Spirit 



A EEMAEK 

Vividly as abstractions may be presented, they 
rarely succeed in revealing truths with the ap- 
pealing intensity of living pictures. In Our Ner- 
vous Friends will be found portrayed, often with 
photographic clearness, a series of lives, with con- 
fidences protected, illustrating chapter for chapter 
the more vital principles of the author's The Mas- 
tery of Nervousness. 



2 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

neighbor to many of the Nation's best memories, 
looking out on a noble sweep of the fine, old Po- 
tomac, with glimpses through the trees of the Na- 
tion's Capitol, glimpses revealing the best of its 
beauties. It was a home from which emanated 
an atmosphere of peace and repose which one 
seemed to feel even as one approached. It was a 
home pervaded with the breath of happiness, a 
home which none entered without benefit. 

The husband, Martin Lord, was an expert chem- 
ist who had long been in the service of the Gov- 
ernment. Capable, worthy, manly, he was blest in 
what he was, and in what he had. They had been 
married eight years, and the slipping away of the 
first child, Margaret, was the only sadness which 
had paused at their door. Mrs. Lord had been 
Ethel Baxter for thirty years. Her father was 
an intense, high-strung business man, an im- 
porter, who spent much time in Europe where he 
died of an American-contracted typhoid-fever, 
when Ethel was ten. Her mother was one of a 
large well-known Maryland family, fair, brown- 
eyed too, and frail ; also, by all the rights of inher- 
itance, training and development, sensitive and 
nervous. In her family the precedents of blue 
blood were religiously maintained with so much 
emphasis on the "blue" that no beginning was 
ever made in training her into a protective robust- 
ness. So, in spite of elaborate preparation and 
noted New York skill and the highest grade of 
conscientious nursing, she recovered poorly after 
Ethel's birth. Strength, even such as she for- 
merly had, did not return. She didn't want to be 



OUR FRIENDLY NERVES 3 

an invalid. She was devoted to her husband and 
eager to companion and mother her child. The 
surgeons thought her recovery lay in their skill, 
and in ten years one operated twice, and two 
others operated once each, but for some reason the 
scalpel's edge did not reach the weakness. Then 
Mr. Baxter died, and all of her physical discom- 
forts seemed intensified until, in desperation, the 
fifth operation was undertaken, which was long 
and severe, and from which she failed to react. 
So Ethel was an orphan at eleven, though not 
alone, for the good uncle, her mother's brother, 
took her to his home and never failed to respond 
to any impulse through which he felt he could ful- 
fil the fatherhood and motherhood which he had 
assumed. Absolutely devoted, affectionate, emo- 
tional, he planned impulsively, he gave freely, but 
he knew not law nor order in his own high-keyed 
life; so neither law nor order entered into the 
training of his ward. 

Ethel Baxter's childhood had been remarkably 
well influenced, considering the nervous intensity 
of both parents. For the mother's sake, their 
winters had been spent in Florida, their summers 
on Long Island. Her mother, in face of the fact 
that she rarely knew a day of physical comfort 
and for years had not felt the thrill of physical 
strength, most conscientiously gave time, thought 
and prayer to her child's rearing. Hours were 
devoted to daily lessons, and many habits of con- 
sideration and refinement, many ideals of beauty, 
many niceties of domestic duty and practically all 
her studies, were mother-taught. Ethel was ac- 



4 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

tive, physically restless, impulsive, cheerful, 
fairly intense in her eagerness for an ex- 
pression of the thrilling activities within. She 
was truly a high-type product of generations of 
fine living, and her blue blood did show from the 
first* in the rapid development of keenness of mind 
and acuteness of feeling. Typically of the nerv- 
ous temperament, she early showed a superb ca- 
pacity for complex adjustments. Yet, with one 
damaging, and later threatening idea, the mother 
infected the child 's mind; the conception of in- 
validism entered into the constructive fabric of 
the child-thought all the more deeply, because 
there was little of offensively selfish invalidism 
ever displayed by the mother. But many of the 
concessions and considerations instinctively de- 
manded by the nervous sufferer were for years 
matters-of-course in the Baxter home; and these 
demands, almost unconsciously made by the 
mother, could but modify much of the natural ex- 
pression of her child's young years. 

Another damaging attitude-reaction, intense in 
its expression, followed the unexpected death of 
Ethel 's father. The mother, true to the ancient 
and honorable precedents of her family, went into 
a month of helplessness following the sad news. 
She could not attend the funeral, and for weeks 
the activities of the household were muffled by 
mourning; when she left her room, it was to wear 
the deepest crepe, while a half-inch of deadest 
black bordered the hundreds of responses which 
she personally sent to notes of condolence. She 
never spoke again of her husband without refer- 



OUR FEIENDLY NERVES 5 

ence to her bereavement. Then, a year later, 
when the mother herself suddenly went, it seemed 
to devolve on the child to fulfil the mother's 
teachings. Her uncle's attitude, moreover, to- 
ward his sister's death was in many ways un- 
happy, for he did not repress expressions of bit- 
terness toward the surgeons and condemned the 
fate which had so early robbed Ethel of both 
parents. 

Thus, early and intensely, a morbid attitude to- 
ward death, a conviction that self-pity was 
reasonable, normal, wholesome, a belief that it 
was her duty to publicly display intensive evi- 
dences of her affliction, determined a lasting and 
potent influence in this girl's life which was to 
alloy her young womanhood — disturbing factors, 
all, which before twelve caused much emotional 
disequilibrium. She now lived with her uncle in 
New York City and her summers were spent in 
Canada. The sense of fitness was so strong that 
during the next two vitally important, developing 
years she avoided any physical expression of her 
natural exuberance of spirits; and habits now 
formed which were, for years, to deny her any 
right use of her muscular self. She read much; 
she read well ; she read intensely. She attended a 
private school and long before her time was an ac- 
credited young lady. Mentally, she matured very 
early, and with the exception of the damaging in- 
fluences which have been mentioned, she repre- 
sented a superior capacity for feeling and con- 
ceiving and accomplishing, even as she possessed 
an equally keen capacity for suffering. 



6 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

She was most winsome at sixteen, a bit frail 
and fragile, often spoken of as a rare piece of 
Sevres, beloved with a tenderness which would 
have warped the disposition of one less unself- 
ish; emotionally intense, brilliancy and vivac- 
ity periodically burst through the habit of her 
reserve. A perfect pupil, and in all fine things 
literary, keenly alive, she had written several 
short sketches which showed imaginative orig- 
inality and a sympathetic sensitiveness, espe- 
cially toward human suffering. And her un- 
cle was sure that a greater than George 
Eliot had come. There was to be a year 
abroad, and as the doctor and her teacher in Eng- 
lish agreed on Italy, there she went. At seven- 
teen, during the year in Florence, the inevitable 
lover came. Family traditions, parents, her or- 
phanage, the protective surroundings of her un- 
cle's home, her instincts — all had kept her apart. 
Her knowledge of young lovers was but literary, 
and this particular young lover presented a side 
which soon laid deep hold on her confidence. 
They studied Italian together. He was musical, 
she was poetic, and he gracefully fitted her son- 
nets to melodies. Finally, it seemed that the great 
Song of Life had brought them together to com- 
plete one of its harmonies. Her confidence grew 
to love, the love which seemed to stand to her for 
life. Then the awful suddenness, which had in 
the past marked her sorrows, burst in again. In 
one heart-breaking, repelling half -hour his other 
self was revealed, and a damaged love was left to 
minister to wretchedness. Here was a hurt de- 



OUR FRIENDLY NERVES 7 

nied even the expression of mourning stationery 
or black apparel — a hurt which must be hidden 
and ever crowded back into the bursting within. 
Immediate catastrophe would probably have fol- 
lowed had not, first, the fine pride of her fine self, 
then the demands of her art for expression, 
stepped in to save. She would write. She now 
knew human nature. She had tasted bitter- 
ness ; and with renewed seriousness she became a 
severely hard-working student. But the wealth 
of her joy-life slipped away; the morbid made it- 
self apparent in every chapter she wrote, while 
intensity became more and more the key-note of 
thought and effort. 

Back at her uncle's home, the uncle who was 
now even more convinced that Ethel had never 
outlived the shock of the loss of her parents, she 
found that honest study and devotion to her self- 
imposed tasks, and a life of much physical com- 
fort and rarely artistic surroundings, were all 
failing to make living worth while. In fact, 
things were getting into a tangle. She was be- 
coming noticeably restless. Repose was so lost 
that it was only with increasing effort that she 
could avoid attracting the attention of those near. 
Even in church it would seem that some demon of 
unrest would never be appeased and only could 
be satisfied by constant changing of position. 
Thoughts of father and mother, and the affair 
in Florence, intensified this spirit of unrest, and 
few conscious minutes passed that unseen stray 
locks were not being replaced. It seemed to be a 
relief to take off and put on, time and again, the 



8 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

ring which had been her mother's. Even her feet 
seemed to rebel at the confinement of shoes, and 
she became obsessed with the impulse to remove 
them, even in the theater or at the concert. A 
sighing habit developed. It had been growing 
for years into an air-hunger, and finally all physi- 
cal, and much of mental, effort developed a sense 
of suffocation which demanded short periods of 
absolute rest. Associations were then formed 
between certain foods and disturbing digestive 
sensations. Tea alone seemed to help, and she be- 
came dependent upon increasingly numerous cups 
of this beverage. Knowing her history as we do, 
we can easily see how she had become abnor- 
mally acute in her responses to the discomforts 
which are always associated with painful emo- 
tions, and that emotional distress was inter- 
preted, or misinterpreted, as physical disorder. 
Each year she became more truly a sensitive- 
plant, suffering and keenly alive to every discom- 
fort, more and more easily fatigued by the con- 
flicts between emotions, which craved expression, 
and the will, which demanded repression. 

Since the days in Florence there had been a 
growing antagonism to men, certainly to all who 
indicated any suitor-like attitude. In her heart 
she was forsworn. She had loved deeply once. 
Her idealism said it could never come again. 
But her antagonism, and her idealism, and her 
strength of will all failed to satisfy an inarticulate 
something which locked her in her room for hours 
of repressed, unexplained sobbing. Her writing 
became exhausting. Talks before her literary 



OUR FRIENDLY NERVES 9 

class were a nightmare of anticipation — for 
through all, there had never been any weakening 
of the beauty and intensity of her unselfish desire 
to give to the world her best. The dear old uncle 
watched her with growing apprehension. He per- 
suaded her to seek health. It was first a water- 
cure; then a minor, but ineffective operation; 
then much scientific massage; and finally a rest- 
cure, and at the end no relief that lasted, but a re- 
currence of symptoms which, to the uncle, spoke 
ominously of a threatened mental balance. What 
truly was wrong? Do we not see that this 
woman's nerves were crying out for help; that, 
as her wisest friends, they were appealing for 
right ways of living ; that they were pleading for 
development of the body that had been only half- 
trained; that they were beseeching a replacing 
of morbidness of feeling by those lost joyous hap- 
piness-days? Were they not fairly cursing the 
wrong which had robbed her of the hope and 
rights of her womanhood? 

A new life came when she was twenty-eight, 
with the saving helper who heard the cry of the 
suffering nerves, and interpreted their message. 
She had told him all. His wise kindness made it 
easy to tell all. He showed her the wrong invalid- 
ism thoughts, the unhappy, depressing, devitaliz- 
ing attitude toward death. He revealed truths un- 
thought by her of manhood and womanhood. 
He pointed out the poisonous trail of her enmity, 
and she put it from her. He inspired her to make 
friends with her nerves, who were so devotedly 
striving to save her. Simple, definite counsel he 



10 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

gave, for her body's sake. Her physical develop- 
ment could never be what early constructive care 
would have made it, but from out of her frailty 
grew, in less than a year of active building-train- 
ing, a reserve of strength unknown for genera- 
tions in the women of her line. Wholesome ad- 
vice made her see the undermining influence of 
her morbid, mental habits, and resolutely she dis- 
placed them with the productive kind that builds 
character. Finally, new wisdom and a truly 
womanly conception of her duty and privilege re- 
placed her antagonism to men, as understanding 
had obliterated enmity. It would seem as 
though Providence had been only waiting these 
changes, for they had hardly become certainties 
in her life when the real lover came — a man in 
every way worthy her fineness of instinct; one 
who could understand her literary ambitions and 
even helpfully criticize her work; one who 
brought wholesome habits of life and thought, 
and who could return cheer for cheer, and whose 
love responded in kind to that which now so 
wonderfully welled up within her. 

Her new adjustments were to be deeply tried 
and their solidity and worthiness tested to their 
center. Little Margaret came to make their rare 
home perfect, and like a choice flower, she thrived 
in the glow of its sunshine. At eighteen months, 
she was an ideal of babyhood. Then the infec- 
tion from an unknown source, the treacherous 
scarlatina, the days of fierce, losing conflict, and 
sudden Death again smote Ethel Lord. But she 
now knew and understood. There was deep sad- 



OUR FRIENDLY NERVES 11 

ness of loss ; there was greater joy in having had. 
There was an emptiness where the little life had 
called forth loving attention ; there was a fulness 
of perfect mother-love which could never be 
taken. There were no funeral days, no mourning 
black, no gruesome burial. There were flowers, 
more tender love, and a beautified sorrow. 
Death was never again to stand to Ethel Lord 
as irreparable loss, for a great faith had made 
such loss impossible. 

And such is the life of this woman, filled with 
the spirit of beauty of soul — a woman who thrills 
husband and son with the uplift of her unre- 
mitting joy in living, who inspires uncle and 
friends as one who has mastered the art of a 
happy life, who holds the devotion of neighbors 
and servants through her unselfish radiation of 
cheer. Ethel Lord has learned truly the in- 
finitely rich possibilities of our nerves when we 
make them our friends. 



CHAPTER II 
THE NEUROTIC 

For four heart-breaking years, the strife of a 
nation at war with itself had spread desolation 
and sorrow broadcast. The fighting ceased in 
April. One mid-June day following, the town 
folk and those from countrysides far and near 
met on the ample grounds of a bride-to-be. Had 
i.t not been for the sprinkling of blue uniforms, 
no thought of war could have seemed possible 
that fair day. The bride 's home had been abustle 
with weeks of preparation for this hour, and 
nature was rejoicing and the heavens smiling 
upon the occasion. Sam Clayton, the bridegroom, 
was certainly a " lucky dog." A quiet, unob- 
trusive son of a neighboring farmer, he and Eliza- 
beth had been school-children together. Prob- 
ably the war had lessened her opportunity for 
choice but the night before he left for the front, 
they were engaged — and her family was the best 
and wealthiest of the county. " Lucky dog" and 
"war romance," the men said. Nevertheless, six 
weeks ago he had returned with his chevrons well- 
earned, and fifty years of square living later 
proved his unquestioned worth. Elizabeth at 
twenty, on her bridal day, was slender, lithe, fair- 
skinned; of Scotch-Irish descent, her gray eyes 

12 



THE NEUROTIC 13 

bespoke her efficiency — to-day, they spoke her 
pride, though neither to-day nor in years to come 
were they often softened by love. But it was a 
great wedding, and the eating and dancing and 
merry-making continued late into the night with 
ample hospitality through the morrow for the 
many who had come far. ' ' Perfectly suited, ' ' the 
women said of the young couple. 

Sam Clayton had nothing which could be dis- 
counted at the bank, but the bride was given fifty 
fertile acres, and they both had industry and 
thrift, ambition and pluck. The fifty acres blos- 
somed — Sam was a good farmer, but he proved 
himself a better trader, and before many 
years was running a small store in town. They 
soon added other fifty acres — one-hundred-and- 
fifty in fifteen years, and out of debt — then a 
partner with money, and a thriving business. At 
forty-five it was: Mr. Samuel Clayton, President 
of the Farmers' and Merchants' Bank, rated at 
$150,000. Mrs. Clayton's ability had early been 
manifest. Before her marriage she had taken 
prizes at the County Fair in crocheting and 
plum- jell. In after years no one pretended 
to compete with her annual exhibit of canned 
fruits, and the coveted prize to the County's best 
butter-maker was awarded her many successive 
autumns. 

Our real interest in the Claytons must begin 
twenty-five years after the happy wedding. 
Their town, the county seat, had pushed its limits 
to the skirts of the broad Clayton acres; theirs 
was now the leading family in that section. Mr. 



14 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

Clayton, quiet, active, practical, was capable of 
adjusting himself without disturbance to what- 
ever conditions he met. Three children had been 
born during the early years — a girl and two 
younger boys. The daughter was of the father's 
type — reserved, studious and truly worthy, for 
during the years that were to come, with the man 
she loved waiting, she remained at home a pillar 
of strength to which her mother clung. She 
turned from wifehood in response to the selfish 
needs of this mother. She and the older brother 
finished classical courses in the near-by "Univer- 
sity," for their mother, particularly, believed in 
education. The brother and sister had much in 
common, were indeed much alike; he, however, 
soon married and moved into the new West and 
deservingly prospered. Fred, the youngest, was 
different. During his second summer he was 
very ill with cholera infantum — the days came 
and went — doctors came and went — and the 
wonder was how life clung to the emaciated form. 
The mother's love flamed forth with intensity 
and the nights without sleep multiplied until she, 
too, looked wan and ill. She did not know how 
to pray. Her parents had been Universalists — 
she termed herself a Moralist; for her, heaven 
held no Grod that can hear, no Great Heart that 
cares, no Understanding that notes a mother's 
agony. The doctors offered no hope. The child 
was starving; no food nor medicine had agreed, 
and the end was near. A neighboring grand- 
mother told how her child had been sick the 
same way, and how she had given him baked sweet 



THE NEUROTIC 15 

potato which was the first thing he had digested 
for days. As fate would have it, it was even so 
with Fred, and he recovered leaving his mother 
devoid of faith in any one calling himself doctor, 
and fanatically devoted to the child she had so 
nearly lost. From that sickness she hovered over 
him, protecting him from the training she gave 
her other children — the kind she herself had re- 
ceived. His wish became her law; he was 
humored into weakness. He never became robust 
physically, and early showed defects quite un- 
known in either branch of the family. He failed 
in college, for which failure his mother found 
adequate excuse. He entered the bank, but 
within a few months his peculations would have 
been discovered had he not confessed to his 
mother, who made the discrepancy good from her 
private funds. During the next few years she 
found it necessary on repeated occasions to draw 
checks on her personal account to save him from 
trouble — but never a word of censure for him, 
always excuses. He was drinking, those days, 
and gambling. In the near-by state capitol the 
cards went his way one night. Hilarious with 
success and drink, he started for his room. 
There was a mix-up with his companions. He 
was left in the snow, unconscious — his winnings 
gone. The wealth of his father and the devotion 
of his mother could not save him, and he went 
with pneumonia a few days later. It was said 
that this caused her breakdown — let us see. 

As a girl, Elizabeth had lived in a home of 
plenty, in a home of local aristocracy. She was 



16 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

perfectly trained in all household activities and, 
for that period, had an excellent education, hav- 
ing spent one year in a far-away "Female 
Seminary." Her mind was good, her pride in 
appearance almost excessive. She said she 
"loved Sam Clayton," and probably did, though 
with none of the devotion she gave her son, nor 
with sufficient trust to share her patrimony which 
amounted to a small fortune with him when it 
came. In fact, she ran her own business, nor 
relied upon the safety of the "Farmers' and Mer- 
chants ' Bank" in making her deposits. She was 
a housewife of repute, devoted to every detail of 
housewifery and economics. There was always 
plenty to eat and of the best; perfect order and 
cleanliness of the immaculate type were her pride. 
Excellent advice she frequently gave her husband 
about finances and management, but otherwise she 
added no interest to his life, and there was peace 
between husband and wife — because Sam was a 
peaceable man. As a mother, she taught the two 
older children domestic usefulness, with every 
care ; they were always clad in good, clean clothes, 
clad better than the neighbors y children, and edu- 
cation was made to take first rank in their minds. 
Her sense of duty to them was strong; she fre- 
quently said: "I live and save and slave for my 
children. ' ' Fred, as we have seen, was her weak- 
ness. For him she broke every rule and law of 
her life. 

At forty-five she was thin, her face already 
deeply seamed with worry lines, a veritable slave 
to her home, but an autocrat to servants, agents 



THE NEUROTIC 17 

and merchants. They said her will was strong; 
at least, excepting Fred, she had never been 
known to give in to <any one. We have not 
spoken of Mary. Poor woman! She, too, was 
a slave — she was the hired girl. Meek al- 
most to automatism, a machine which never 
varied from one year's end to another, faith- 
ful as the proverbial dog, she noiselessly 
slipped through her unceasing round of duties 
for twenty-three years — then catastrophe. 
"That fool hired man has hoodwinked Mary." 
No wedding gift, no note of well-wishing, but a 
rabid bundling out of her effects. Howbeit, Cen- 
tral Ohio could not produce another Mary, and 
from then on a new interest was added to the 
Claytons ' table-talk as one servant followed an- 
other into the Mother's bad graces. She was 
already worn to a feather-edge before Mary's 
ingratitude. But the shock of Fred's death com- 
pleted the demoralization of wrongly lived years. 
For weeks she railed at a society which did not 
protect its citizens, at a church which failed to 
make men good, while she now recognized a God 
against whom she could express resentment. 

This woman endowed with an excellent physical 
and mental organization had allowed her ability 
and capacity to become perverted. Orderliness, 
at first a well planned daily routine, gradually 
degenerated into an obsession for cleanliness. 
Each piece of furniture went through its weekly 
polishing, rugs were swept and dusted, sponged 
and sunned — even Mary could not do the table- 
linen to her taste — and Tuesday afternoon 



18 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

through the years went to immaculate ironing. 
The obsession for cleanliness bred a fear of un- 
cleanliness, and for years each dish was examined 
by reflected light, to be condemned by one least 
streak. The milk and butter especially must re- 
ceive care equaled only by surgical asepsis. 
Then there were the doors. The front door was 
for company, and then only for the elect — and 
Fred ; the side door was for the family, and woe to 
the neighbor's child or the green delivery boy who 
tracked mud through this portal. No amount of 
foot-wiping could render the hired man fit for the 
kitchen steps after milking time — he used a step- 
ladder to bring up the milk to the back porch. 
Such intensity of attention to detail could not 
long fail to make this degenerating neurotic take 
note of her own body, which gradually became 
more and more sensitive, till she was fairly 
distraught between her fear of draughts and 
her mania for ventilation. It was windows 
up and windows down, opening the dampers 
and closing the dampers, something for her 
shoulders and more fresh air. Church, lec- 
ture-halls and theaters gradually became impos- 
sible. Finally she was practically a prisoner in 
the semiobscurity of her home — a prisoner to 
bodily sensation. Then came the autos to curse. 
The Clayton home was within a hundred yards of 
the county road, and when the wind was from 
the west really visible dust from passing motors 
presumed to invade the sanctity of parlor and 
spare rooms, and with kindling resentment 
windows were closed and windows were opened, 



THE NEUROTIC 19 

rooms were dusted and redusted until she hated 
the sound of an auto-horn, until the smell of burn- 
ing gasoline caused her nausea — but each year the 
autos multiplied. 

At last the family realized that her loss of 
control was becoming serious, that she was really 
a sufferer; but her antagonism to physicians was 
deep-set, so the osteopath was called. Had he 
been given a fair chance, he might have helped, 
but her obsessions were such that she resented 
the touch of his manipulations, fearing that some 
unknown infection might exude from his palms 
to her undoing. Reason finally became helpless 
in the grip of her phobias. Her stomach lining 
was " destroyed,' ' and into this "raw stomach' ' 
only the rarest of foods and those of her own 
preparation could be taken. She had fainted at 
Fred's funeral, and repeatedly became dazed, 
practically unconscious, at the mention of his 
name. Self-interests had held her attention from 
girlhood to her wreckage, and from this grew 
self-study, which later degenerated into self-pity. 
Her converse was of food and feelings and self. 
She bored all she met, for self alone was ex- 
pressed in actions and words. 

Father and daughter finally, under the pretext 
of a trip for her health, placed her in a Southern 
sanitarium. Much was done here for her, in the 
face of her protest. Illustrative of the unreason- 
ing intensity with which fear had laid hold upon 
her was her mortal dread of grape-seeds. As she 
was again being taught to eat rationally, grapes 
were ordered for her morning meal. The nurse 



20 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

noticed that with painful care she separated each 
seed from the pulp, and explained to her the value 
of grape-seeds in her case. She wisely did not 
argue with the nurse, but two mornings later she 
was discovered ejecting and secreting the seeds. 
The physician then kindly and earnestly ap- 
pealed for her intelligent cooperation. She there- 
upon admitted that many years ago a neighbor's 
boy had died of appendicitis, which the doctor 
said was caused by a grape-seed. The fallacy of 
these early-day opinions was shown her. Then 
was illustrated the weakness of her faith and the 
strength of her fear. She produced a draft for 
one thousand dollars, which she said she always 
carried for unforeseen emergencies, and offered 
it to the doctor to use for charity or as he wished, 
if he would change the order about the grapes. 
Suffice it to say she learned to eat Concords, 
Catawbas, Tokays and Malagas. She returned 
home better, but was never wholesomely well, and 
to-day dreads the death for which her family wait 
with unconscious patience. 

What is the secret of this miserable old 
woman's failure to adjust herself to the richness 
which life offered her? A selfish self peers out 
from every act. Even her generosity to Fred 
was the pleasing of self. Given all that she had, 
what could she not have been! Physically, with 
the advantages of plenty and her country life and 
the promise of her fair girlhood, what attrac- 
tion could not have been hers had kindness and 
generosity softened her eyes, tinted her cheeks, 
and love-wrinkles come instead of worry-wrinkles. 



THE NEUROTIC 21 

Her mind was naturally an unusual one. She 
lived within driving distance of one of Ohio's 
largest colleges — only an hour by train to the 
state capital. Fortune had truly smiled and 
selected her for happiness, but from the first it 
was self or her family and no further thought or 
plan or consideration. 

Elizabeth Clayton was given a nervous system 
of superb quality, which used for the good of 
those she touched would have hallowed her life; 
misused, she drifts into unlovable old age, a self- 
ish neurotic. She could have been a leader in 
her community, a blessing in her generation, a 
builder of faiths which do not die, but she failed 
to choose the good part which neither loss of serv- 
ant, death of child nor advancing age can take 
away. 



CHAPTER III 
THE PRICE OF NERVOUSNESS 

The price we pay for defective nerves is one 
of mankind's big burdens. Humanity reaches its 
vaunted supremacy, it realizes the heights of man- 
hood and womanhood through its power to meet 
what the day brings, to collect the best therefrom 
and to fit itself profitably to use that best for the 
good of its kind. And these possibilities are all 
dependent on the superb, complicated nervous 
system. The miracles of right and wise living 
are rooted deep in the nerve-centers. Man's 
nervous system is his adjusting mechanism — his 
indicator revealing the proper methods of reac- 
tion. Nothing man will ever make can rival its 
sensitiveness and capacity. But when it is out of 
order, trouble is certain. Excessive, imperfect, 
inadequate reactions will occur and disintegrating 
forms of response to ourselves and our surround- 
ings will certainly become habitual, unless wise 
and resolute readjustments are made. The com- 
mon failure of the many to find the best, even 
the good in life, is apparent to all — so common in- 
deed, that the search for the perfectly adjusted 
man, physically, mentally, morally adjusted, is 
about as fruitful as Diogenes' daylight excur- 
sions with his lantern. The physical, mental and 

22 



THE PRICE OF NERVOUSNESS 23 

moral are intricately related even as the primary 
colors in the rainbow. Our nerves enter in- 
timately into every feeling, thought, act of life, 
into every function of our bodies, into every as- 
piration of our souls. They determine our diges- 
tion and our destinies; they may even influence 
the destinies of others. Let us turn a few pages 
of a life and see the cost of defective nervous- 
living. 

The Pullman was crowded; every berth had 
been sold; the train was loaded with holiday 
travelers, and the ever interesting bridal couple 
had the drawing-room. The aisle was cluttered 
with valises and suitcases; the porter was fever- 
ishly making down a berth; while bolstered on a 
pile of pillows, surrounded by a number of 
anxious faces, lay the sick woman, the source of 
the commotion and the anxiety. Sobs followed 
groans, and exclamations followed sobs — appar- 
ently only an intense effort of self-control kept 
her from screaming. She held her head. Peri- 
odically, it seemed to relieve her to tear at her 
hair. She held her breath, she clutched her 
throat, she covered her eyes as though she would 
shut out every glimpse of life. She convulsively 
pressed her heart to keep it from bursting 
through; she clasped and wrung her hands, and 
now and then would crowd her forearm between 
her teeth to shut in her pent-up anguish. She 
would have thrown herself from the seat but for 
the unobtrusive little man who knelt in front to 
keep her from falling, and gently held her on as 
she spasmodically writhed. His plain, unro- 



24 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

mantic face showed deep anxiety, not unmixed 
with fear. He was eagerly assisted by the dear 
old lady who sat in front. Hers was mother- 
heart clear through; her satchel had been dis- 
turbed to the depths in her search for remedies 
long faithful in alleviating ministration; her 
camphor bottle lay on the floor, impulsively 
struck from her kind hand by the convulsed 
woman. The sweet-faced college girl who sat 
opposite had just finished a year in physiology 
and this was her first opportunity to use her new 
knowledge. "Loosen her collar and lower her 
head and. let her have more air," she advised. 
"Yes," said the little man, "I'm her husband 
you see, and am a doctor. I've seen her this way 
before and those things don't help." 

The drummer, who had the upper berth, had re- 
treated at the first sign of trouble to the safety 
of the smoking-room, and was apparently trying 
more completely to hide himself in clouds of ob- 
scuring cigar smoke. The passengers were all 
cowed into attentive quietude; the sympathetic 
had offered their help, while the others found 
satisfaction for their aloofness in agreement with 
the sophisticated porter, who, after he had as- 
sisted in safely depositing the writhing woman be- 
hind the green curtains and had been rather 
roughly treated by her protesting heels, shrewdly 
opined to the smoking-room refugees that "That 
woman sho has one case o' high-strikes." The 
berth, however, proved no panacea — she was "suf- 
focating, ' ' she must get out of the smoke and dust, 
she must get away from "those people" or she 



THE PRICE OF NERVOUSNESS 25 

would stifle, and to the other symptoms were 
added paroxysms of coughing and gasping which 
sent shivers through the whole car of her sym- 
pathizers. Her husband explained that she was 
just out of a hospital, which they had left unex- 
pectedly for home, that she never could sleep 
in a berth, and if they could only get the draw- 
ing-room so he could be alone with her he thought 
he could get her to sleep, but he did not know 
what the consequences would be if she did not get 
quiet. The Pullman conductor was strong for 
quiet, and he and the sweet-faced college girl and 
the dear old lady formed a committee who waited 
on the young bride and groom. It was hard, 
mighty hard, even in the bliss of their happiness, 
to give up the drawing-room for a lower. Had 
not that drawing-room stood out as one of their 
precious dreams during the last year, as, step by 
step, they had planned in anticipation of that short 
bridal week? But the sacrifice was made, the 
transfers effected, and out of the quiet which fol- 
lowed, emerged order and the cheer normal to 
holiday travelers. A number were gratified by 
the sense of their well-doing, they had gone their 
limit to help; others were equally comfortable in 
their satisfied sense of shrewdness, they agreed 
with the porter — they had sized her up and not 
been " taken in." 

Mrs. Piatt had been Lena Dalton. She was 
born in Galveston forty-five years before. Her 
father was a cattle-buyer, rough, dissipated, 
always indulgent to himself and, when mellow 
with drink, lavishly indulgent to the family. He 



26 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

never crossed Lena; even when sober and ir- 
ritable to the rest, she had her way with him. 
The high point in his moral life was reached when 
she was seven. For three weeks she was 
desperately ill. A noted revivalist was filling a 
large tent twice a day; the father attended. He 
promised himself to join the chnrch if Lena did 
not die — she got well, so there was no need. She 
remained his favorite. " Drunk man's luck" for- 
got him several years later when his pony fell 
and rolled on him, breaking more ribs than could 
be mended. He left some insurance, two 
daughters, and a very efficient widow. Mrs. 
Dalton had held her own with her husband, even 
when he was at his worst. She was strong of 
body and mind, practical, probably somewhat 
hard, certainly with no sympathy for folderols. 
Her common-school education, in the country, had 
not opened many vistas in theories and ideals, 
but she lived her narrow life well, doing as she 
would be done by — which was not asking much, 
nor giving much — caring for herself without fear 
or favor till she died, as she wished, at night 
alone, when she was eighty. She possessed quali- 
ties which with the help of a normal husband 
would have been a wholesome heritage to the 
children; but it was a home of double standards, 
certainly so in the training of Lena, who had 
never failed, when her father was home, to get 
the things her mother had denied her in his 
absence. She was thirteen when he died; at 
fifteen then followed her two most normal years. 



THE PRICE OF NERVOUSNESS 27 

The accident occurred which was to prove fateful 
for her life, and through hers, for others. 

Lena was a good roller-skater, but was upset 
one night, at the rink, by an awkward novice and 
fell sharply on the back of her head. She was 
taken home unconscious and was afterward 
delirious, not being herself until noon the next 
day, when she found beside her an anxious mother 
who for several days continued ministering to her 
daughter's every wish. Three months later she 
set her heart on a certain dress in a near-by shop 
window; her mother said it was too old for her, 
and cost too much. Day after day passed and the 
dress remained there, more to be desired each 
time she saw it. The Sunday-school picnic was 
only a week off. She made another appeal at the 
supper table; her sister unwisely interjected a 
sympathetic "too bad." The emphasis of the 
mother's "No" sounded like a " settler/ ' but just 
then things went dark for Lena. She grasped 
her head and apparently was about to fall — her 
face twitched and her body jerked convulsively. 
The mother lost her nerve, and feeling that her 
harshness had brought back the "brain symp- 
toms " which followed the skating accident, 
spent the night in ministrations — and hanging at 
the foot of Lena's bed, when she was herself 
next morning, was the coveted dress. To those 
who know, the mental processes were simple; 
strong desire, an implacable mother, save when 
touched by maternal fear, the association in the 
girl's mind of a relationship between her acci- 



28 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

dent and her mother's compliance, a remoter as- 
sociation of her illness at seven with her father's 
years of free giving. What was to restrain her 
jerkings and twitehings and moanings? Many of 
these reactions were taking place in the semi- 
mysterious laboratory of her subconscious self; 
but it was the beginning of a life of periodic out- 
breaks through which she had practically never 
failed to secure what she desired. To the end of 
her good mother's life, Lena remained the only 
one who could change her "no" to "yes." 

The elder sister was a more normal girl. She 
studied stenography and soon married a promis- 
ing young man. They had two children. He 
made a trip down the coast and died of yellow 
fever. The wife was much depressed and spent a 
bad year and most of the insurance money, getting 
adjusted. Then the Galveston storm with its har- 
vest of death and miraculous escapes — the mother 
was taken, the two children left. Meanwhile 
Lena had finished high school, had taken a year 
in the Normal and secured a community school 
to teach, near Houston. She was now eighteen, 
her face was interesting, some of the features 
were fine. Her bluish-gray eyes could be par- 
ticularly appealing; there was much mobility of 
expression; a wealth of slightly curling, light- 
chestnut hair was always stylishly arranged; in 
fact, her whole make-up caused the young fellows 
to speak of her as the "cityfied school-marm." 
Then came the merchant's son and all was going 
well, so well that they both pledged their love 
and plighted their troth. The temporary distrac- 



THE PRICE OF NERVOUSNESS 29 

tion of her lover 's attention, deflected by the visit- 
ing brunette in silks, an inadvertently broken ap- 
pointment (the train was late and he could not 
help it), and the first attack of the "jerks" among 
strangers is recorded. They hastily summoned 
old Jake Piatt's son, just fresh from medical 
college, who, helpless with this suffering bit of 
femininity, supplied in attention and practical 
nursing what he lacked in medical discernment 
and skill, to the end that one engagement was 
broken and another formed in a fortnight. Old 
Jake had some money; the young doctor was 
starting in well, and needed a wife ; she was still 
jealous, and young Dr. Piatt got a wife, who 
molded his future as the modeler does his clay. 

Within the first month the bride had another 
attack. They had planned a trip to Houston to 
do some shopping and to attend the theater. The 
doctor-husband was delayed on a case and found 
his young bride in the throes of another nervous 
storm when he reached home, nor did the symp- 
toms entirely abate until he had promised her that 
he would always come at once, no matter what 
other duties he might have, when she needed him. 
By this promise he handicapped his future suc- 
cess as a physician and did all that devoted igno- 
rance could do to make certain a periodic repeti- 
tion of the convulsive seizures. This was but the 
first of a series of concessions which involved his 
professional, social and financial future, which 
her " infirmity' ' exacted of him as the years 
passed. Later old Jake died and the doctor's 
share of his big farms was an opportune help. 



30 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

But Mrs. Piatt had a certain far-reaching ambi- 
tion; therefore, they soon moved to Houston. 
He would have done well where he started; his 
education, his medical equipment, his personal- 
ity were certain to limit his progress in a city. 
The doctor's wife was superficially bright, 
capable of adapting herself with distinct charm to 
those she admired. She formed intense likes and 
dislikes — while often impulsively kind-hearted, she 
could cling to vindictive abuse for months. Here 
was a woman who proved very useful on 
church committees, in societies, in Sunday- 
school, who worked effectively in the Civic 
Club. She sang fairly well naturally, of 
course "-adored music" and was an efficient 
enthusiastic worker when interested. But Lena 
Piatt was never able to work when not in- 
terested. Periodically her "fearful nervous 
spells" would interfere with all duties. The 
doctor was absolutely subsidized. Had any other 
attractions appealed to him, his wife's early evi- 
dences of implacable jealousy would have proven 
a sure antidote. He was an unconscious slave. 
Her nervousness expressed itself toward him in 
other terms than convulsively. She had a tongue 
which from time to time blistered the poor man. 
He would never talk back, fearful as he ever was of 
bringing on one of those storms which, in his in- 
adequate medical knowledge, were as mysterious 
and ominous as epileptic attacks. 

For years the absence of children in the home 
was a sorrow from which much affecting senti- 
mentality evolved, being as well the pathetic cause 



THE PRICE OF NERVOUSNESS 31 

for days of sickness, when outside interests were 
less attractive to this artful sufferer than the 
attentions elicited by her illness. Then out of 
the great gulf surged the heroic Galveston 
tragedy, and the two orphan children came to 
fill the idealized want. At first they received 
an abundance of impulsive loving, but un- 
happily one day, a few months after they 
came, the foster-mother overheard the elder girl 
make an unfavorable comparison between her and 
the real mother; and for years distinctions were 
made — the younger being always favored, the un- 
fortunate, older child living half -terrorized, never 
knowing when angry, unfair words would assail 
her. 

Lena Piatt had confided to several of her bosom 
friends the tragedy of her unequal marriage and 
that she knew she would yet find a "soulmate." 
There was a Choral Society in Houston one 
winter, and following a few gratuitous compli- 
ments from the dapper young director, she de- 
cided she had found it. He left in the spring and 
this dream faded. A few months later the new 
minister's incautious exaggeration that "he 
didn't know how he could run the church with- 
out her" came near resulting in trouble, for 
some of the good sisters unkindly questioned the 
quality of her sudden excessive devotion and re- 
ligious zeal. Mrs. Piatt was not vicious, but she 
craved excitement; hers was a life of constantly 
forming new plans. Attention from any source 
was sweet and from those of prominence it was 
nectar. Things were pretty bad in the doctor's 



32 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

home after the preacher episode, and she was 
finally persuaded to let her husband call in an- 
other physician. He was very nice to her, and 
while he never pretended to understand her case, 
his medicine and advice benefited her tremen- 
dously and she went nearly a year without a bad 
attack. Her visits to his office and her con- 
scienceless use of his time were finally brought 
to a sudden close when one day he deliberately 
called other patients in, leaving her unnoticed 
in the waiting-room. Bad times again, then other 
new doctors, other periods of immunity from at- 
tacks, with exaggerated devotion to each new 
helper until she had made the rounds of the de- 
sirable, professional talent of Houston. 

Meanwhile, impulsive extravagance had sadly 
reduced the Piatt inheritance, so when an ac- 
quaintance returned from St. Louis nervously re- 
created by a specialist there, the poor doctor had 
to borrow on his insurance to make it possible for 
her to have the benefit of this noted physician's 
skill. The trip North meant sacrifice for the en- 
tire family. Apparently she wished to be cured, 
and the treatment began most auspiciously. 
After careful, expert investigation, assurance had 
been given that if she would do her part, she could 
be made well in six months. Her husband told 
the physician that he hoped he would "look in 
on her often, for she will do anything on earth 
for one she likes.' ' The treatment was thorough- 
going; it began at the beginning, and during the 
early weeks she was enthusiastically satisfied with 
the skill of her treatment and the care of her 



THE PRICE OF NERVOUSNESS 33 

special nurse, in whom she found another " bosom 
friend/ ' to whom she confided all. Her devotion 
for the new doctor grew by leaps. Mistaking his 
kindness and thinking perchance she might ex- 
tract more beneficent sympathy by physical 
methods, she impulsively threw herself into 
where-his-arms-would-have-been had he not side- 
stepped. Her position physically and sentimen- 
tally was awkward; the doctor called the nurse 
and left her. Later he returned and did his best 
to appeal to her womanhood; he analyzed her ill- 
ness and showed her some of the damage it had 
wrought both in her character and to others. He 
showed her the demoralization which had grown 
out of her wretched surrender to impulsive desire. 
He revealed to her the necessity for the efface- 
ment of much of her false self and the true spirit- 
ualizing of her mind as the only road to whole- 
some living. That same day Dr. Piatt received 
a telegram peremptorily demanding that he come 
for her. Upon his arrival he had a short talk 
with the specialist who succinctly told him the 
problem as he saw it. For a few minutes, and 
for a few minutes only, was his faith in the help- 
less reality of his wife's sickness shaken; but faith 
and pity and indignation were united as she told 
of her mistreatment and how she had been out- 
raged and her whole character questioned by that 
" brutal doctor,' ' who talked to her as no one had 
ever dared before. She was going home on the 
first train and going home we found her, having 
another attack in the Pullman. A collapse, her 
husband told himself, from over-exertion and the 



34 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

result of her wounded womanhood. "A plain 
case o' high-strikes' ' was the porter's diagnosis; 
a sickness sufficiently adequate to have the sweet 
incense of much public attention poured upon her 
wounded spirit — and to secure the coveted draw- 
ing-room ! 

On her way home! She had spurned her 
one chance to be scientifically taught the woe- 
fully needed lessons of right living — on her 
way to the home which had become more and 
more chaotic with the passing of the years and 
the dwindling of their means. 

Who can count the price this woman has paid 
for her nervousness! At fifty, with a scrawny, 
under-nourished body, the wrinkled remnants of 
beauty, she suffers actual weakness and distress. 
Quick prostration follows all effort, excepting 
when she is fired by excitement. All ability to 
reason in the face of desire is gone; she is 
dominated by emotions which become each year 
more unattractive ; even the air-castles are tumbled 
into ruins. Her husband is a slave — used as 
a convenience. Her waning best is for those who 
attract her, her growing worst for those who of- 
fend. One child's life is maimed by indulgence, 
the other's by injustice. She has reached that 
moral depravity which fails to recognize and ac- 
cept any truth which is opposed to her wishes. 
As she looks back over the vista of years, filled 
with many activities, no monument of wholesome 
constructiveness remains; she has blighted what 
she touched. Lena Piatt, a wilful, spoiled, selfish 
hysteric ! 



CHAPTER IV 
WRECKING A GENERATION 

The afternoon's heat was intense; it was re- 
flecting in shimmering waves from everything 
motionless, this breathless September day in 
Donaldsville, Texas. Main Street is a half-mile 
long, unpainted "box-houses" fringe either end 
and cluster unkemptly to the west, forming the 
"city's" thickly populated "darky town." Near 
the station stands the new three-story brick hotel, 
the pride of the metropolis. Not even the Court 
House at the county seat is as imposing. Main 
Street is flanked by parallel rows of one and 
two story, brick store-buildings, from the fronts 
of which, and covering the wide, board-sidewalks, 
extend permanent, wooden awnings; these are 
bordered by long racks used for the ponies and 
mules of the Saturday crowds of "bottom 
niggers" and "post oak farmers." The higher 
ground east of Main Street is preempted by the 
comfortable residences of Donaldsville proper and 
culminates in Quality Hill, where the two bankers 
and a select group of wealthy bottom-planters 
lived in aristocratic supremacy. On this par- 
ticular afternoon, the town's only business street 
was about deserted. On its shady side were 
hitched a few Texas ponies whose drooping heads 

35 



36 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

and wilted ears bespoke the heat — so hot it was 
that the flies, even, did not molest them. Scat- 
tered groups of lounging, idle men indicated the 
enervating influence of the sizzling 108° in the 
shade. 

But Donaldsville was not dead — perspiring cer- 
tainly, but still possessing one lively evidence of 
animation. From time to time peals of boister- 
ous laughter, boisterous but refreshing as the 
breath of a breeze, a congenial, almost contagious 
laughter would roll up and down Main Street even 
to its box-house fringes. Each peal would call 
forth from some dusky denizen of the suburbs the 
proud recognition: " Dar's Doctor Jim laughin' 
some mo'." Doctor Jim's laughter was one of 
Donaldsville 's attractive features. His friends 
living a mile away claimed they often heard it — 
and everybody was Doctor Jim's friend. No 
more genial, generous gentleman of the early 
post-bellum Texas South could be found. His 
was an unfathomed well of good nature, good 
humor and good stories. He knew all comers 
whether he had met them before or not. For him, 
it was never "Stranger," it was always 
"Friend." 

Let us take his proffered hand and feel the 
heartiness of its greeting, feel its friendly shake, 
even to our shoe-soles. His good humor beams 
from his deep-blue eyes; his shock of gray hair, 
which knows no comb but his fingers, is pushed 
back from a brow which might have been a 
scholar's, were it not so florid. A soft, white 
linen shirt rolls deeply open, exposing a grizzled 



WRECKING A GENERATION 37 

expanse of powerful chest. Eoomy, baggy, spot- 
less, linen trousers do homage to the heat, as does 
his broad, palm-fiber hat, used chiefly as a fan. 
Doctor Jim McDonald, six feet in his socks, 
weighing 180 pounds, erect and manly in bear- 
ing in spite of his negligee, is a remarkable speci- 
men of physical manhood at sixty-five. Even 
with the Saturday afternoon crowds of the cotton- 
picking season, Main Street seems deserted if his 
resounding laughter is not heard; but it takes 
something as serious as a funeral to keep him 
away from his accustomed bench in front of 
Doctor "Will's drug-store, centrally located on the 
shady side of the street. Doctor Will is Doctor 
Jim's brother, and is, according to the negroes, a 
"sho-nuif" doctor. 

Doctor Jim's life is comfortably monotonous. 
He had put up the first windmill in the region 
roundabout and his was the first real bath-tub in 
the county, and long before Donaldsville thought 
of water-works, Doctor Jim's windmill was keep- 
ing the big cistern on stilts filled from his deep 
artesian well. He started each day with a stim- 
ulating plunge in his big tub, and never tired pro- 
claiming that with this and enough good whiskey 
he would live to be a hundred — and then Main 
Street would stop and listen to the generous 
reverberations of his deep-chested laugh. Three 
good meals, the best old Aunt Sue could cook and 
Aunt Sue came from Mississippi with them after 
the war — were eaten with an unflagging relish by 
this man whose digestion had never discovered it- 
self. Two mornings a week Doctor Jim drove 



38 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

leisurely out to his big Trinity Eiver plantation, 
a two-thousand-acre plantation, where he was the 
beloved overlord of sixty negro families. This 
rich, river-bottom farm, when cotton was at a 
good price, brought in so much that Doctor Jim, 
with another of his big laughs, would say he was 
"mighty lucky in having those rascally twins to 
throw some of it away." One night a week he 
could always be found at the Lodge, and once a 
day he covered each way the half-mile separating 
his generous, rambling home on Quality Hill and 
Doctor Will's office. His only real recreation was 
funerals. He would desert his shady seat and 
drive miles to help lay away friend or foe — if foes 
he had. On such occasions only, would he pass 
the threshold of a church. He contributed gen- 
erously to each of the town's five denominations 
and showed considerable restraint in the presence 
of the cloth in his choice of reminiscences, but it 
was always the occasion of a good-natured uproar 
for him to proclaim, "The Missus has enough re- 
ligion for us both. ' ' Still the silence of his charity 
could have said truly that his donation had con- 
structed one-fifth of each church-building in the 
town; in fact, it was his pride to double the Bib- 
lical one-tenth in his giving. 

Of his open-heartedness Doctor Jim rarely spoke 
but another pride was his, to which he allowed 
no day to pass without some hilariously expressed 
reference. He was proud of his whiskey-drink- 
ing. One quart of Kentucky's best Bourbon from 
sun to sun, decade after decade! "I have drunk 
enough whiskey to float a ship — and some ship 



WRECKING A GENERATION 39 

too. Look at me! Where will you find a 
healthier man at sixty-five? I haven't known a 
sick minute since the war. If you drink whiskey 
right, with plenty of water and plenty of eatin', 
it won't hurt anybody." This was the law and 
the gospel to Doctor Jim; he never failed to 
proclaim it to pale-faced youths or ailing man- 
kind; and the Book of Judgment, alone, will re- 
veal the harvest of destruction which Time reaped 

through Doctor Jim's influence in L County. 

Yet, oddly, it was Doctor Jim's principle and 
practice never to treat. He claimed he had never 
offered a living soul a social drink. 

" Drink whiskey right and it won't hurt any- 
body!" Did it hurt? 

Doctor Jim and his two brothers spent their 
early life on a plantation in Mississippi. The 
father wanted the boys to be educated. Two of 
them took medical courses in New Orleans. 
Doctor Jim wished to see more of the world, and 
literally did see much of it on a two-year cruise 
around the Horn to the East Indies and China. 
He was thirty-five years old in '60 when he mar- 
ried. Then he served as surgeon — "mighty poor 
surgeon" he used to say, for a Mississippi regi- 
ment throughout the four years of the Civil War. 
He and his two brothers passed through this con- 
flict and returned home to find their father dead, 
the negroes scattered and the old plantation devas- 
tated. The three with their families journeyed 
to Texas — the then Land of Promise ! At twenty- 
five cents an acre they bought river-bottom lands 
which are to-day priceless, and the losses of the 



40 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

past were soon forgotten in the rapid prosperity 
of the following years. 

Mrs. McDonald represented all that high type 
of character which the dark years of the war 
brought ont in so many instances of Southern 
womanhood. Patient, hopeful, uncomplaining 
she lived through the four years of war-time sep- 
aration, left her own people and journeyed to the 
Southwest to begin life anew. She was particu- 
larly robust of physique, domestic in a' high sense, 
gentle and deeply kind. She passed through 
hardship, privation and prosperity practically not 
knowing sickness. Her children could not have 
had better mother-stock, and the scant days were 
in the past, so they never knew the lack of plenty. 
There were eight, from Edith, born in 1870, to 
Frank, in 1885, including the twins. 

Did whiskey-drinking hurt ? 

Edith grew into a slender, retiring girl, her 
paleness accentuated by her black hair. She was 
quiet, read much, and took little interest in out- 
of-door activities, entering into the play-life of 
the other children but rarely. Her father in- 
sisted, later, on her riding, and she became a fair 
horsewoman. She was refined in all her rela- 
tions. Edith went to New Orleans at seventeen. 
The spring after, she developed a hacking cough 
and had one or two slight hemorrhages, but at 
twenty was better and married an excellent young 
merchant. The child was born when she was 
twenty-two; three weeks later the mother died, 
leaving a pitiable, scrofulous baby, which medical 
and nursing skill kept lingering eighteen months. 






WEECKING A GENERATION 41 

The first boy was named James, Jr., as we 
should expect, and, as we should not expect, 
was never called "Jim." But James was not 
right. He developed slowly, did not walk till 
over three, was talking poorly at five ; he was sub- 
ject to convulsions and destructive outbreaks ; he 
was uncertain and clumsy in his movements, so 
provision was made that he might always have 
some one with him. But even in the face of this 
care, he stumbled and fell into the laundry-pot 
with its boiling family-wash, was badly scalded 
and seriously blinded. James mercifully died 
two years later in one of his convulsions. 

Mabel was the flower of the family. Through 
her girlhood she was lovable in every way, and be- 
loved. She was blond like her father, though not 
as robust as either father or mother, and in ideals 
and character was truly the latter 's daughter. 
She finished in a finishing school, had musical 
ability and charm, and soon married and made 
a happy home — an unusual home, until the birth 
of the first child. Since then it has been a fight 
for health, with the pall of her family's history 
smothering each rekindling hope. Operations 
and sanatoria, health-resorts and specialists have 
not restored, and she lives, a neurasthenic mother 
of two neurotic children. Happiness has long fled 
the home where it so loved to bide those early 
days, before the strain and stress of maternity 
had drained the mother's poor reserve of vitality. 

The history of Will and John, named for the 
two uncles, would prove racy reading through 
many chapters. "The Twins" were the father's 



42 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

text for spicy stories galore many years before 
their death. From the first, they were "two 
young sinners." They both had active minds — 
overactive in devising deviltry. Mischievous as 
little fellows, never punished, practically never 
corrected by their father, humored by sisters, 
house-servants, and the plantation-hands, feared 
and admired by other boys, they seemed proof 
against any helpful influence from the earnest, 
pained, prayerful mother. As boys of ten, they 
had become "town talk" and were held respon- 
sible for all pranks and practical jokes perpe- 
trated in Donaldsville or thereabout, unless other 
guilty ones were captured red-handed. Multiply 
your conception of a "bad boy" by two and you 
will have Will at twelve ; repeat the process and 
you will have John. They possessed one 
quality — dare we call it virtue ? — which kept them 
dear to Doctor Jim's heart through their very 
worst. They never lied to him, no matter what 
their misdeeds. They could lie as veritable troop- 
ers, but from him the truth in its rankest boldness 
was never withheld. As the years passed, they 
made many and deep excursions into the old 
doctor's pocket. But he paid the bills cheerfully 
and sent his reverberating laugh chasing the 
speedy dollars, as soon as he got with some 
of his Main Street cronies. The boys planned 
and worked together, protecting each other 
most cleverly. Still they were expelled from 
every school they attended after they were 
thirteen. A military academy noted for its 
ability to handle hard cases found them quite 



WEECKING A GENERATION 43 

too mature in their wild ways, and sent them 
home. They may, for reasons best known to 
themselves, have been ' ' square with the old man, ' ' 
but they were a pair of thoroughgoing toughs by 
twenty, not only fast but cruel, even brutal, in 
their evil-doing. 

Will was the first to show the strain of the 
pace. When twenty-two, the warning cough 
sobered him a bit, and in John's faithful and 
congenial company, he went first to Denver, then 
to New Mexico. Doctors' orders were irksome, 
whiskey and cards the only available recreation 
for the boys, and so they tried to follow their 
father's example in developing a powerful phy- 
sique on Kentucky Bourbon ("best"). John 
suddenly quit drinking. "Acute nephritis" was 
on the shipping paster. Delirium tremens was 
the truth. Will was too frail to accompany his 
brother's remains home. He was pretty lonely 
and anxious, and miserable without John, but for 
several weeks behaved quite to the doctor's satis- 
faction. It didn't last long, and within the year 
tuberculosis and Bourbon laid him beside his 
brother. 

May was a promising girl, "almost a hoiden," 
the neighbors said. She rode the ponies bare- 
back; she played boys' games, and at twelve 
looked as though the problem of health could 
never complicate her glad, young life. But cough 
and hemorrhage, twin specters, stalked in at six- 
teen and the poor child fairly melted away and 
was gone in a year. 

Annabel, the youngest girl, was a quiet child 



44 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

and thoughtful. Some called her dull, but rather, 
it seems, she early sensed her fate. When but 
a child she was sent to "San Antone" and op- 
erated on by a throat specialist. After May's 
death she went to the mountains each summer and 
spent two winters in South Texas. But she grew 
more and more thin, and in the end it was tuber- 
culosis. 

Frank, the last child, was different from all the 
others. He seemed bright of mind and active of 
body. He attended school as had none of the 
other boys ; he even went to Sunday-school. Phys- 
ically and mentally, he gave promise of prolong- 
ing the family line — but he proved his father's 
only admitted regret. He lied and he stole. The 
money which his father would have given him 
freely he preferred to get by cunning. Doctor 
Jim could not tolerate what he called dishonesty, 
and from time to time they would have words and 
Frank would be gone for months. His cleverness 
made him a fairly successful gambler; that he 
played the game "crooked" is probably evidenced 
by his being shot in a gambling- joint before he 
was thirty. 

We have thus scanned the wreckage of a gen- 
eration bred in alcohol. Children they were of 
unusual physical and mental parentage, parents 
who never knowingly offended their consciences, 
children reared in most healthful surroundings 
with every comfort and opportunity for normal de- 
velopment. Four of them showed their physical 
inferiority through the early infection and un- 
usually poor resistance to tuberculosis; one was 



WRECKING A GENERATION 45 

born an imbecile; one died directly from the ef- 
fects of drink; the only girl who survived early 
maturity, the best of them all, spent twenty years 
a nervous sufferer, mothering two nervously de- 
fective children; the physically best was the 
morally worst and died a criminal. 

Doctor Jim lived on with his habits unchanged, 
his laugh, only, losing something in volume and 
more in infectiousness. Still proud of his health 
he preached the gospel of good whiskey well 
drunk, never sensing his part in the tragedy of his 
own fireside. He was nearly eighty when the 
stroke came which bereft him of any possibility 
of understanding, or of knowing remorse. He had 
laid his wife away some years previously and for 
months he lingered on paralyzed, demented, in the 
big, empty house, cared for by an old negro couple, 
hardly recognizing Mabel when she came twice a 
year, but never forgetting that, "Whiskey won't 
hurt anybody.' ' 



CHAPTER V 
THE NERVOUSLY DAMAGED MOTHER 

His name is not Lawrence Adams Abbott. The 
surname really is that of one of America's first 
families. He, himself, is among the few living 
of a third generation of large wealth. 

It was an early-summer afternoon and 
Dr. Abbott — for he was a graduate of Cornell 
Medical — was standing at one of the train gates 
of the Grand Central Station in New York. As 
he waits apart from the small crowd assembled 
to welcome, he attracts observing attention. His 
face appears thirty; he is thirty-six. The 
features are finely cut, the chin is especially good. 
The eyes are blue-gray, and a slight pallor prob- 
ably adds to his apparent distinction. His atti- 
tude is languid, the handling of his cane grace- 
fully indolent, the almost habitual twisting of his 
chestnut-brown mustache attractively self-satis- 
fied. His clothing is handsome, of distinctive ma- 
terials, and tailored to the day. So much for an 
observing estimate. The critical observer would 
note more. He would detect a sluggishness in the 
responses of the pupils, as the eyes listlessly 
travel from face to face, producing an effect of 
haunting dulness. Mumbling movements of the 
lips, a slightly incoordinate swaying of the body, 

46 



THE NERVOUSLY DAMAGED MOTHER 47 

might speak for short periods of more than ab- 
sent-mindedness. 

But the gates open and after the eager, intense 
meetings, and the more matter-of-fact assumption 
of babies and bundles, the red-capped porters, 
with their lucky burdens of fashionable traveling- 
cases, pilot or follow the sirs and mesdames of 
fortune. Among these is one whose handsome 
face is mellowed by softening, early-gray hair, and 
whose perfect attire and tenderness in greeting 
our doctor at once associate mother and son. 
She has just come down the Hudson on one of the 
few seriously difficult errands of her fifty-six 
years. 

Two weeks have passed. The room is stark 
bare, save for two mattresses, a heap of di- 
sheveled bed clothes, and two men. The hours are 
small and the dim, guarded light, intended to 
soften, probably intensifies the weirdness of the 
picture. The suspiciously plain woodwork is 
enameled in a dull monochrome. The windows 
are guarded with protecting screens. One man, 
an attendant, lies orderly on his pallet ; the other, 
a slender figure in pajamas, crouches in a corner. 
His hair is bestraggled; his face is livid; his 
pupils, widely dilated; his dry lips part now and 
then as he mutters and mumbles inarticulately 
or chuckles inanely. Now starting, again ab- 
stracted, he is capable of responding for a 
moment only, as the attendant offers him his 
nourishment. A few seconds later he is groaning 
and twisting, obviously in pain, pain which is for- 
gotten as quickly, as he reaches here and there for 



48 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

imaginary, flying, floating things. Real sleep has 
not closed his eyes for now nearly three nights. 
He is delirious in an artificial, merciful semi- 
stupor, which is saving him the untold sufferings 
of morphin denial. Before this unhappy Dr. 
Abbott stretch long, wearisome weeks of readjust- 
ment, weeks of physical pain and mental discom- 
fort, weeks, let us hope, of soul-prodding remorse. 
His only chance for a future worth spending lies 
in months of physical reeducation, of teaching his 
femininely soft body the hardness which stands 
for manliness ; for him must be multiplied days of 
mental reorganization to change the will of 
a weakling into saving masterfulness; nor will 
these suffice unless, in the white heat of a moral 
revelation, the false tinsel woven into the fabric 
of his character be consumed. For months he 
must deny himself the luxuries, even many of the 
comforts, his mother's wealth is eager to give. 
Yet these weeks and months of development may 
never be, for in a short time he will again be 
legally accountable, and probably will resent and 
refuse constructive discipline, and return to a 
satin-upholstered life — his cigarettes, his wine- 
dinners, his liquors, and his "rotten feeling' ' 
mornings after — then to his morphin and to his 
certain degradation. And why should this be? 
Time must turn back the hands on her dial thirty- 
three years that we may know. 

The fine Abbott home was surrounded by a 
small suburban estate near Philadelphia, a gen- 
eration ago ; we have met the then young mistress 
of the mansion, at the Grand Central Station. It 



THE NERVOUSLY DAMAGED MOTHER 49 

was a home of richness, a home of discriminating 
wealth, a home of artistic beauty; it was a home 
of nervous tension. This neurotic intensity was 
not of the cheap helter-skelter, melodramatic 
sort; there was a splendid veneer of control. 
But all the mother's plans and activities depended 
on the moods, whims and impulses of little 
Lawrence, the only child, then glorying in the hey- 
day of his three-year-old babyhood. It was a 
household kept in dignified turmoil by this child 
of wealth, who needed a poor boy's chance to be a 
lovable, hearty, normal chap. It was overatten- 
tion to his health, with its hundreds of impending 
possibilities ; to his food, with the unsolvable per- 
plexity of what the doctor advised and of what 
the young sire wanted. More of satisfaction, per- 
haps, was found in clothing the youth, as he cared 
less about these details ; still, an unending variety 
of weights and materials was provided that all 
hygienic and social requirements might be ade- 
quately met. Anxious thought was daily spent 
that his play and playmates might be equally 
pleasing and free from danger. Almost prayer- 
ful investigation was made of the servants who 
ministered, and tense, sleepless hours were spent 
by this nervous mother striving to wisely decide 
between the dangers to her child of travel and 
those other dangers of heated summers and bleak 
winters at home. Frequent trips into the city and 
frequent visitations from the city were made, that 
expert advice be obtained. Consultations were 
followed by counter consultations and conferences 
which but added the mocking counsel of inde- 



50 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

cision. And the marble of her beauty began to 
show faint marrings chiseled by tension and 
anxiety — for was not Lawrence her only son? 

It was a home of double standards. The father 
was a wholesome, serious-minded, essentially rea- 
sonable, Cornell man. His ideas were manly and 
from time to time he laid down certain principles, 
and when at home, with apparently little effort, 
exacted and secured a ready and certainly not un- 
happy, obedience from his son. But business in- 
terests and responsibilities were large and the 
bracing tonic of his association with the boy was 
all too passing to put much blood-richness into 
the pallor of the child's developing character. 
Moreover, this intermittent helpfulness was more 
than counteracted by the mother's disloyal, 
though unconscious dishonesty. Hers was an 
open, if need be a furtive, overattention and over- 
stimulation, an inveterate surrender to the sweet 
tyranny of her son's childish whims. There was 
probably nothing malicious in her many little 
plans which kept the father out of the nursery and 
ignorant of much of their boy's tutelage. The 
mother was only repeating fully in principle, and 
largely in detail, her own rearing ; and had she not 
"turned out to be one of the favored few?" 

The suburban special went into a crash, and all 
that a fine father might have done through future 
years to neutralize the unwholesome training of 
a nervous mother was lost. In fact, her power 
for harm was now multiplied. The large proper- 
ties and business were hers through life, and with 
husband gone, and so tragically, there was in- 



THE NERVOUSLY DAMAGED MOTHER 51 

creased opportunity, and unquestionably more 
reason, for the intensification of her motherly 
care. So the fate of a fine man's son is left in the 
hands of a servile mother. 

It now became a home of restrained extrava- 
gance. The table was fairly smothered with rare 
and rich foods. Fine wines and imported liquors 
entered into sauces and seasonings. The boy's 
playroom was a veritable toy-shop, with its hun- 
dreds of useless and unused playthings. Long be- 
fore any capacity for understanding enjoyment 
had come, this unfortunate child had lost all love 
for the simple. With Mrs. Abbott, it was always 
"the best that money can buy" — unwittingly, the 
worst for her child's character. It was a home of 
formal morality. Sunday morning services were 
religiously attended; charities of free giving, the 
giving which did not cost personal effort, were 
never failing. It was a home of selfish unselfish- 
ness. All weaknesses in the son throughout the 
passing years were winked at. Never from his 
mother did Lawrence know that sympathy, some- 
times hard, often abrupt, never pampering, which 
breeds self-help. 

Lawrence went to the most painstakingly 
selected, private preparatory-schools, and later, 
as good Abbotts had done for generations, entered 
Cornell. He had no taste for business. For 
years he had been associated with gifted and 
agreeable doctors ; he liked the dignity of the title ; 
so, after two years of academic work, he entered 
the medical department and graduated with his 
class. These were good years. His was not a 



52 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

nature of active evil. Many of his impulses were 
quite wholesome, and college fraternity camarad- 
erie brought out much that was worthy. In the 
face of maternal anxiety and protest, he went 
out for track, made good, stuck to his training 
and in his senior year represented the scarlet and 
white, getting a second in the intercollegiate low 
hurdles. Another trolley crash now, and he 
might have been saved! 

All through his college days a morbid fear had 
shortened his mother's sleep hours with its 
wretchedness. Her boy was everything that 
would attract attractive women. Away from her 
influence he might marry beneath him, so all the 
refinements of intrigue and diplomacy were uti- 
lized that a certain daughter of blood and wealth 
might become her daughter-in-law. The two 
women were clever, and woe it was that his com- 
mencement-day was soon followed by his wed- 
ding-day. No more sumptuous wedding4rip 
could have been arranged — to California, to the 
Islands of the Pacific, to India, to Egypt, then a 
comfortable meandering through Europe. A year 
of joy-living they planned that they might learn to 
know each other, with all the ministers of happi- 
ness in attendance. But the disagreements of 
two petted children made murky many a day of 
their prolonged festal journey, and beclouded for 
them both many days of the elaborate home-mak- 
ing after the home-coming. And the murkiness 
and cloudiness were not dissipated when parent- 
hood was theirs. Neither had learned the first 
page in Life's text-book of happiness, and as 



THE NERVOUSLY DAMAGED MOTHER 53 

both could not have their way at the same time, 
rifts grew into chasms which widened and deep- 
ened. Then the wife sought attentions she did 
not get at home in social circles and the husband 
sought comforts his wife and his home did not 
give, in drink and fast living, later with cocain 
and morphin. The ugliness of it all could not be 
lessened by the divorce, which became inevitable. 
By mutual agreement, the rearing of the child was 
intrusted to the father's mother, who to-day 
shapes its destiny with the same unwholesome 
solicitude which denied to her own son the heritage 
of wholesome living. 

We met father and grandmother as she arrived 
in New York to arrange for the treatment, which 
even his beclouded brain recognized as urgent; 
and we leave him with a darkening future, unless 
Fate snatches away a great family's millions, or 
works the miracle of self-revelation, or the greater 
miracle of late-life reformation dn the son of this 
nervously damaged mother. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE MESS OF POTTAGE 

"I know Clara puts too much butter in her 
fudge. It always gives me a splitting headache, 
but gee, isn't it good! I couldn't help eating it 
if I knew it was going to kill me the next day." 
The Pale Girl looks the truth of her exclamations, 
as she strolls down the campus-walk arm-in-arm 
with the Brown Girl, between lectures the morn- 
ing after. 

Clara Denny had given the "Solemn Circle" 
another of her swell fudge-feasts in her room the 
night before, and, as usual, had wrecked sleep, 
breakfast, and morning recitations for the elect 
half-dozen, with the very richness of her hand- 
brewed lusciousness. They called Clara the 
Buxom Lass, and they called her well. She was, 
physically, a mature young woman at sixteen, 
healthy, vigorous, rose-cheeked, plump, and not 
uncomely, frolicsome and care-free, with ten dol- 
lars a week, "just for fun." She was a worthy 
leader of the Solemn Circle of sophomores which 
she had organized, each member of which was 
sacredly sworn to meet every Friday night for one 
superb hour of savory sumptuousness — in the 
vernacular, "swell feeds." 

Clara was a Floridian. Her father had 

54 



THE MESS OF POTTAGE 55 

shrewdly monopolized the transfer business in the 
state's metropolis, and from an humble one-horse 
start now operated two-score moving-vans and 
motor-tracks, and added substantially, each year, 
to his real-estate holdings. Mr. Denny let fall an 
Irish syllable from time to time, regularly took 
his little "nip o' spirits," and ate proverbially 
long and often. Year after year passed, with the 
hardy man a literal cheer-leader in the Denny 
household, till his gradually hardening arteries 
began to leak. Then came the change which 
brought Clara home from college — home, first to 
companion, then to nurse, and finally through ugly 
years, to slave for this disintegrating remnant of 
humanity. Slowly, reluctantly, this genial, old 
soul descended the scale of human life. He was 
dear and pathetic in the early, unaccustomed 
awkwardness of his painless weakness. "Only a 
few days, darlin', and we'll have a spin in the 
car and your father '11 show thim upstarts how to 
rustle up the business." The rustling days did 
not come, but short periods of irritability did. 
He wanted his "Clara-girl" near and became im- 
patient in her absence. He objected to her 
mother's nursing, and later became suspicious 
that she was conspiring to keep Clara from him, 
and often greeted both mother and daughter with 
unreasonable words. His interests narrowed 
pitiably, until they did not extend beyond the 
range of his senses, and the senses themselves 
dulled, even as did his feelings of fineness. He 
grew careless in his habits, and required increas- 
ing attention to his beard and clothing. Coarse- 



56 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

ness first peeped in, then became a permanent 
guest — a coarseness which the wife's presence 
seemed to inflame, and which could be stilled 
finally only by the actual caress of his daughter's 
lips. And with the slow melting of brain-tissue 
went every vestige of decency ; vile thoughts which 
had never crossed the threshold of John Denny's 
normal mind seemed bred without restraint in 
the caldron of his diseased brain. His was a vital 
sturdiness which, for ten years, refused death, but 
during the last of these he was physically and 
morally repellent. Sentiment, that too-often fear 
of unkind gossip, or ignorant falsifying of conse- 
quences, stood between this family and the proper 
institutional and professional care, which could 
have given him more than any family's love, and 
protected those who had their lives to live from 
memories which are mercilessly cruel. 

Clara's older brother had much of his father's 
good cheer and less of his father's good sense. 
He, too, had money to use "just for fun," and 
Jacksonville was very wide open. So, after his 
father's misfortune had eliminated paternal re- 
straint, the boy's "nips o' spirits" multiplied into 
full half -pints. For twelve years he drank badly, 
was cursed by his father, prayed for by his 
mother, and wept over by Clara. The wonderful 
power of a Christian revival saved him. He "got 
religion" and got it right, and lives a sane, sober 
life. 

The older sister had married while Clara was 
at school, and lived with her little family in 
Charleston. Her "duty" was in her home, but 



THE MESS OF POTTAGE 57 

this duty became strikingly emphasized when 
things "went wrong' ' in Jacksonville, and she 
frankly admitted that she was entirely "too 
nervous to be of any use around sickness"; nor 
did she ever come to help, even when Clara's cup 
of trouble seemed running over. And this cup was 
filled with bitterness when, suddenly, the mother 
had a "stroke," and the care of two invalids and 
the presence of her periodically drunk brother 
made ruthless demands on her twenty years. The 
mother had been a sensible woman, for her ad- 
vantages, and most efficient, and under her teach- 
ing Clara had become exceptionally capable. The 
two invalids now lay in adjoining rooms. ' ' Either 
one may go at any time," the doctor said, and 
when alone in the house with them the daughter 
was haunted with a morbid dread which frequently 
caused her to hesitate before opening the door, 
with the fear that she might find a parent gone. 
As it happened, she was away, taking treatment, 
unable to return home, when grippe and pneu- 
monia took the mother, and the candle of the 
father 's life finally flickered out. 

Clara had handled the home situation with inter- 
mittent efficiency. When she entered her father's 
sick-room, called suddenly from the thoughtless 
hilarities of the Solemn Circle and fudge-feasts, 
and saw him so altered, and, for him, so danger- 
ously frail, in his invalid chair, something went 
wrong with her breathing; the air could not get 
into her lungs; there was a smothering in her 
throat and she toppled over on the bed. It seemed 
to take smelling-salts and brandy to bring her 



58 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

back. She said afterwards that she was not un- 
conscious, that she knew all that was happening, 
but felt a stifling sense of suffocation. Later 
after one of her father's first unnatural out- 
breaks, she suffered a series of chills and 
her mother thought, of course, it was ma- 
laria; but many big doses of quinin did 
not break it up, and no matter when the doctor 
came, his little thermometer revealed no fever. 
She spent three months at Old Point Comfort and 
the chills were never so bad again. Other dis- 
tressing internal symptoms appeared closely fol- 
lowing the shock of her mother's sudden paralysis. 
An operation and a month in a northern hospital 
were followed by comparative relief. But her 
nervous symptoms finally became acute and she 
was spending the spring and early summer on rest- 
cure in a sanitarium when her parents died. The 
Jacksonville home was then closed. 

Soon after, Clara was profoundly impressed at 
the same revival in which her brother was con- 
verted. While she could not leave her church to 
join this less formal denomination, she entered into 
Home Missionary activities with much zest. At 
this time a friendship was formed with a woman- 
physician who, as months of association passed, 
attained a reasonably clear insight into her life 
and encouraged her to enter a well-equipped, 
church training-school for deaconesses. The spell 
of the religious influences of the past year's re- 
vival was still strong ; this, and the stimulation of 
new resolves, carried her along well for six 
months. In her studies and practical work she 



THE MESS OF POTTAGE 59 

showed ability, efficiency and flashes of common 
sense. Then she became enamored of a younger 
woman, a class-mate — her heart was empty and 
hungry for the love which means so much to 
woman's life. Unhappily, she overheard her un- 
faithful loved one comment to a confidante : "It 
makes me sick to be kissed by Clara Denny.' ' 
Another damaging shock, followed by another 
series of bad attacks — the old spells, chills and in- 
ternal revolutions had returned. She rapidly be- 
came useless and a burden. The school-doctor 
sent her a thousand miles to another specialist. 

We first met Clara Denny effervescent, winning, 
almost charming — a sixteen-year-old minx. Let 
us scrutinize her at thirty-six. What a deforma- 
tion ! She weighs one hundred and seventy- three 
— she is only five-feet-four; her face is heavy, 
soggy, vapid; her eyes, abnormally small; her 
complexion is sallow, almost muddy; her chin, 
trembling and double; strongly penciled, black 
eye-brows are the only remnant apparent of the 
"Buxom Lass" of twenty years ago. Her hands 
are pudgy; her figure soft, mushy, sloppy; her 
presence is unwholesome. The specialist found 
her internally as she appeared externally. While 
not organically diseased, the vital organs were 
functionally inert. Every physical and chemical 
evidence pointed to the accumulation in a natu- 
rally robust body of the twin toxins — food poison 
and under oxidation. She was haunted by a fear 
of paralysis. She confused feelings with ideas 
and was certain her mind was going. The spells 
which had first started beside her invalid father 



60 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

were now of daily occurrence. She, nor any one 
else knew when she would topple over. She found 
another reason for her belief that her brain was 
affected in her increasingly frequent headaches. 
For years she had been unable to read or study 
without her glasses, because of the pain at the 
base of her brain. When these wonderful 
glasses were tested, they were found to repre- 
sent one of the mildest corrections made by 
opticians; in fact, her eyes were above the aver- 
age. Her precious glasses were practically 
window-glass. 

Much of each day had been spent in bed, and 
hot coffee and hot-water bottles were required to 
keep off the nerve-racking chills which otherwise 
followed each fainting spell. Her appetite never 
flagged. She had been a heavy meat eater from 
childhood. There never was a Denny meal with- 
out at least two kinds of meat, and one cup of 
coffee always, more frequently two — no namby- 
pamby Postum effects, but the genuine " black- 
drip.' ' In the face of much dental work, her 
sweet tooth had never been filled. She loved food, 
and her appetite demanded quantity as well as 
quality. Of peculiar significance was the fact 
that throughout the years she had never had a 
spell when physically and mentally comfortable, 
but, as the years passed, the amount of discom- 
fort which could provoke a nervous disturbance 
became less and less. She was a well-informed 
woman, quite interesting on many subjects, out- 
side of herself, and had done much excellent read- 
ing. Unafmcted, she would mentally have been 



THE MESS OF POTTAGE 61 

more than usually interesting. When her special- 
ist began the investigation of her moral self, he 
found her impressed with the belief that she was 
a " saved woman," ready and only waiting health 
that she might take up the Lord's work. But as 
he sought her soul's deeper recesses, he uncov- 
ered a quagmire. Eesentment rankled against 
the sister who had left her alone to meet the 
exhausting burdens of their parents' illness and 
brother's drinking — a sister who had taken care 
of herself and her own family, regardless. Worse 
than resentment smoldered against the father, a 
dull, deadening enmity, born in the hateful hours 
of his odious, but helpless, dementia. Burning 
deep was an unappeased protest that, instead of 
the normal life and pleasures and opportunities 
of other girls, she had been chained to his objec- 
tionable presence. 

Treatment was undertaken, based upon a clear 
conception of her moral, mental and physical 
needs. Seven months of intensive right-living 
were enjoined. The greatest difficulty was found 
in compelling restraint from food excesses. The 
love for good things to eat was theoretically 
shelved, but, practically, the forces of desire and 
habit seemed insurmountable. Her craving for 
"good eats" now and then discouraged her reso- 
lutions and she periodically broke over the rigid 
hospital regimen. But she was helped in every 
phase of her living. The skin cleared; a hint of 
the roses returned; twenty-five pounds of more 
than useless weight melted away and weeks passed 
with no threat of spell or chill. She was renew- 



62 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

ing her youth. A righteous understanding of the 
lessons which her years of sacrifice held, appealed 
to her judgment, if not to her feelings, and, as a 
new being, she returned to the church training- 
school. 

Most fully had Miss Denny been instructed in 
principle and in practice concerning the, for her, 
vital lessons of nutritional right-living. Each step 
of the way had been made clear, and it had proven 
the right way by the test of practical demonstra- 
tion. The outlined schedule of habits, including 
some denials and some gratuitous activity, kept 
her in prime condition — in fact, in improving con- 
dition, for six highly satisfactory months. Never 
had she accomplished so much; never did life 
promise more, as the result of her own efforts. 
She had earned comforts which had apparently 
deposed forever her old nervous enemies. Vic- 
torious living seemed at her finger-tips. Then 
she sold her birth-right. 

She was feeling so well; why could she not be 
like other people? Certainly once in a while she 
could have the things she " loved.' ' It was only a 
small mess of pottage — some chops, a cup of real 
coffee, some after-dinner mints. The doctor had 
proscribed them all, but ' ' Once won 't hurt. ' ' Her 
conscience did prick, but days passed; there was 
no spell, no chill, no headache. "It didn't hurt 
me" was her triumphant conclusion; and again 
she ventured and nothing happened — and again, 
and again. Then the coffee every day and soon 
sweets and meats, regardless ; then coffee to keep 
her going. The message of the returning faint- 



THE MESS OF POTTAGE 63 

ing spells was unheeded, unless answered by 
recklessness, for fear thoughts had come and old 
enmities and new ones haunted in. Eoutine and 
regimen had gone weeks before, and now a vaca- 
tion had to be. She did not return to her work, 
but deluded herself with a series of pretenses. 
Before the year was gone, the imps of morbid 
toxins came into their own and she resorted to 
wines, later to alcohol in stronger forms — and 
alcohol usually makes short work of the fineness 
God gives woman. 

We leave Clara Denny at forty, leave her on 
the road of license which leads to ever-lowering 
levels. 



CHAPTER VII 
THE CRIME OF INACTIVITY 

A half -century ago the Stoneleighs moved West 
and located in Hot Springs. The wife had re- 
cently fallen heir to a few thousand dollars, which, 
with unusual foresight, were invested in suburban 
property. Mr. Stoneleigh was a large man, one 
generation removed from England, active, and 
noticeably of a nervous type. He was industri- 
ous, practically economical, single-minded; these 
qualities stood him in the stead of shrewdness. 
From their small start he became rapidly wealthy 
as a dealer in real estate. Mr. Stoneleigh was a 
generous eater; his foods were truly simple in 
variety but luxurious in their quality and rich- 
ness. Prime roast-beef, fried potatoes, waffles 
and griddle-cakes supplied him with heat, energy 
and avoirdupois. He suddenly quit eating at 
fifty-eight — there was a cerebral hemorrhage one 
night. His remains weighed one hundred and 
ninety-five. 

The wife was a comfortable mixture of Irish 
and English. Her people were so thrifty that she 
had but a common-school education. She was the 
only child, her industrious mother let her go 
the way of least resistance, and were we tracing 
responsibility of the criminality behind our 

64 



THE CRIME OF INACTIVITY 65 

tragedy, Mrs. Stoneleigh's mother would prob- 
ably be cited as the guilty one. The way of least 
resistance is usually pretty easy-going, and keeps 
within the valley of indulgence. Therefore, Mrs. 
Stoneleigh worked none, was a true helpmate to 
her husband, at the table, and like him, grew fat, 
and from mid-life waddled on, with her hundred 
and eighty pounds. She was superstitiously 
very religious, with the kind of religion that 
shudders at the thought of missing Sunday morn- 
ing service or failing to be a passive attendant at 
the regular meetings of the Church Aid Society. 
Practically, the heathen were taught Ameri- 
can civilization, and she herself was assured 
sumptuous reservations in Glory by generous 
donations to the various missionary societies. 

The only real ordeal which this woman ever 
faced was the birth of Henry, her first child ; she 
was very ill and suffered severely. The mother 
instinct centered upon this boy the fulness of her 
devotion — a devotion which never swerved nor 
faltered, a devotion which never questioned, a de- 
votion which became a self-forgetting servility. 
John arrived almost unnoticed three years later, 
foreordained to be this older brother's henchman 
as long as he remained at home. John developed. 
Education was not featured in the Stoneleighs , 
program, so John stopped after his first year at 
high school, but he was energetic, and through 
serving Henry had learned to work. At twenty 
he married, left the family roof, and starting life 
for himself in a nearby metropolis became a suc- 
cessful coal-merchant. 



66 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

Little Henry Stoneleigh would have thrilled any 
mother's heart with pride. He had every quality 
a perfect baby should have, and grew into a large 
handsome boy, healthy and strong; his disposi- 
tion was the envy of neighboring mothers; nor 
was it the sweet goodness of inertia, for he was 
mentally and emotionally quick and responsive 
above the average. Indulged by his mother from 
the beginning and always preferred to his brother, 
he never recognized duty as duty. This young 
life was innocent of anything which suggested 
routine ; order for him was a happen-so or an of- 
course result of his mother's or John's efforts; 
the details necessary for neatness were never al- 
lowed to ruffle his ease nor to interfere with his 
impulses. The Stoneleighs ' home was a generous 
pile, locally magnificent, but our young scion's 
fine, front room was perennially a clutter. From 
his birth up, Henry was never taught the rudi- 
ments of responsibility. His boyhood, however, 
was not unattractive. He had inherited a large 
measure of vitality and was protected from dis- 
appointments or irritations by the many comforts 
which a mother's devotion and wealth can arrange 
and provide. His memory was superior. The 
boy inherited not only an exceptional physique, 
but mental ability which made his early studies 
too easy to suggest any objection on his part. In 
fact, he was actively interested in much of his 
school work and did well without the conscious 
expenditure of energy. 

Little discrimination was shown in the arrange- 
ments for his higher education; still he arrived 



THE CRIME OF INACTIVITY 67 

at a popular Western Boy's Academy, rather 
dubious in his own mind as to just how large a 
place he would hold in the sun, with mother and 
John back home. Rather rudely assailed were 
some of his easy-going habits, and considerable 
ridicule from certain sources rapidly decided his 
choice of companions. It was young Stoneleigh's 
misfortune that at this epoch in his development 
he was situated where money could buy immuni- 
ties and attract apparent friendships. He was of 
fine appearance, and should by all rights have 
made center on the Academy football team, being 
the largest, heaviest, strongest boy in school. But 
one day in football togs is the sum of his foot- 
ball history. Academy days went in good feeds, 
the popularity purchased by his freedom of purse 
and easy-going good fellowship, and much read- 
ing, which he always enjoyed and which, with his 
good memory, made him unusually well-informed. 
Finals even at this Academy demanded special 
effort, which, with Henry, was not forthcoming, 
so he returned home without his diploma. This 
incident decided him not to attempt college, so 
for a year he again basked in the indulgences of 
home-life. His father's business interests had 
no appeal for him, but the personal influence of a 
young doctor, with his vivid tales of medical-col- 
lege experiences, and the struggling within of a 
never recognized ambition, with some hap- 
hazard suggestions from his mother, determined 
him to study medicine. 

At this time a medical degree could still be ob- 
tained in a few schools at the end of two years' 



68 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

attendance. Henry chose a Tennessee college 
which has, for reasons, long since ceased to exist, 
an institution which practically guaranteed 
diplomas. Here after three very comfortable 
years, he was transformed into "Doc" Stone- 
leigh. At twenty-five, "Doc" weighed two hun- 
dred and forty, and returned home for another 
period of rest. He did not open an office, nor did 
he ever begin the practice of his profession. 
During the next five years he lived at home, sleep- 
ing and reading until two in the afternoon, his 
mother carrying breakfast and lunch to his room. 
The late afternoons and evenings he spent in 
hotel-lobbies and pool-rooms, where he was always 
welcomed by a bunch of sports. Popular through 
his small prodigalities, he, at thirty, possessed a 
more than local reputation for the completeness 
of his assortment of salacious stories — his 
memory and native social instinct were herein suc- 
cessfully utilized. "Doc" now weighed two hun- 
dred and eighty-five, ate much, exercised none, 
and was the silent proprietor of a pool-room, 
obnoxious even in this wide-open town. 

At twelve he had begun smoking cigarettes; 
at twenty he smoked them day and night. The 
entire family drank beer, but, oddly, the desire 
for alcohol never developed with him. Yet at 
thirty he began acting queerly, and it was gen- 
erally thought that he was drinking. Often now 
he did not go home at night and was frequently 
found dead asleep on one of his pool-tables. He 
had fixed up a den of a room where they would 
move him to ' ' sleep it off . ' ' A fad for small rifles 



THE CRIME OF INACTIVITY 69 

developed till lie finally had over twenty of dif- 
ferent makes in his den and spent many nights 
wandering around the alleys, shooting rats and 
stray cats. Eats became an obsession. They in- 
vaded his room and he would frequently awaken 
suddenly and empty the first gun he reached 
at their imaginary forms, much to the disquiet of 
the neighbors. One night he burst out of his 
place, began shooting wildly up and down the 
street and rushing about in a frenzy. No single 
guardian of the peace presumed to interfere with 
his hilarity, and two of the six who came in the 
patrol-wagon had dismissed action for deep con- 
templation before he was safely locked up as 
' ' drunk.' ' The matter was kept quiet, as befitted 
the prominence of the Stoneleighs. 

To his mother's devotion now was added fear, 
and she freely responded to his demands for funds. 
There were no more outbreaks, but he was ob- 
viously becoming irresponsible, and influences 
finally secured his mother's consent to take him 
to a special institution in another state. This was 
quietly effected through the cooperation of the 
family physician, who successfully drugged poor 
"Doc" into pacific inertness. He was legally 
committed to an institution empowered to use con- 
structive restraint, and for four months benefited 
by the only wholesome training his wretched life 
had ever known. Here it was discovered that he 
had been using quantities of codein and cocain, 
against the sale of which there were then no re- 
strictions. Unusual had been his physical equip- 
ment, his indulgences unchecked by any sentiment 



70 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

or restraint, the penalty of inactivity was meting a 
horrible exaction — an exaction which could be 
dulled only by dope. In the early prime of what 
should have been manhood, this unfortunate's 
mind, as revealed to the institution's authorities 
during his days of enforced drugless discomfort, 
was a filthy cess-pool ; cursings and imprecations, 
vile and vicious, were vomited forth in answer to 
every pain. His brother, his doctors, his mother 
were execrated for days, almost without ceasing. 
Here was a man without principle. As he became 
more comfortable, physically, he became more 
decent, and later his natural, social tendencies 
began to reappear attractively. 

At the end of four months the patient was per- 
force much better. He then succeeded in induc- 
ing his mother to have him released "on proba- 
tion. " Many fair promises were made. For 
months he was to have an attendant as a com- 
panion. His mother, believing him well, con- 
sented, after securing his promise in writing to 
return for treatment should there be a relapse into 
his old habits. As evidencing the decay of his 
character, these fair promises were made with- 
out the slightest intention that they would be kept. 
The first important city reached after crossing 
the state-line saw his demeanor change. Beyond 
the legal authority of the state in which he 
had been committed, he was free, and he knew it. 
With a few words he consigned his now help- 
less attendant to regions sulphurous, and alone 
took train in the opposite direction from home. 
For several months he went the paces. With his 



THE CRIME OF INACTIVITY 71 

medical knowledge and warned by his recent ex- 
periences he was able to so adjust his doses as to 
avoid falling into the hands of the authorities. 
The weak mother never refused to honor his 
drafts. Six months later a serious attack of 
pneumonia caused her to be sent for, and when 
he was able to travel she took him back to the 
home he had forsworn. 

For over ten years "Doc" Stoneleigh has lived 
with his mother, a recluse, a morphin-soaked 
wreck. Sometimes he may be seen in a park near 
their home, sitting for hours inert, or auto- 
matically tracing figures in the gravel with his 
cane, noticing no one, unkempt, almost repellent. 
He is still sufficiently shrewd to secure morphin 
in violation of the law. Sooner or later the 
revenue department will cut off his supply. He 
drifts, a rotting hulk of manhood, unconsciously 
nearing the horrors of a drugless reality. 

The depth of this man's degradation may tempt 
us to feel that he was defective, but an accurate 
analysis of his life fails to reveal any deficiency 
save that reprehensible training which made pos- 
sible his years of physical and mental indolence. 



CHAPTEE Vin 
LEARIHNG TO EAT 

It was three in the early July afternoon. The 
large parlor, which had been turned into a bed- 
room, was darkened by closely-drawn shades; a 
dim, softened light coming from a half-hidden 
lamp deepened the dark rings around the worn 
nurse 's eyes — eyes which bespoke sleepless nights 
and a heavy heart. A wan mother stood near the 
nurse, every line of her face showing the pain 
of lengthened anxiety. Tensely one hand held 
the other, the restraint of culture, only, keeping 
her from wringing them in her anguish. Dr. 
Harkins, the village physician, stood at the foot 
of the bed, his honest face set in strong lines in 
anticipation of the worst. Many scenes of suffer- 
ing had rendered him only more sympathetic with 
human sorrow, sympathetic with the real, increas- 
ingly intolerant of the false. At the bed-side 
stood the expert, who had come so far, at so great 
an expense — long, rough miles by auto that a few 
hours might be saved — who had come, they all 
believed, to decide the fate of the beloved girl who 
lay so death-like before them. 

Euth Eivers was the only one in the room who 
was not keenly alert or distressingly tense. 
Even in her waxy whiteness and unnatural 

72 



LEARNING TO EAT 73 

emaciation, her face was good. The forehead 
was high and, with the symmetrical black eye- 
brows and long, dark lashes, suggested at a glance 
the good quality of her breeding. The aquiline 
nose was pinched by suffering, the finely curving 
lips were now bloodless and drawn tight from 
time to time, as though to repress the cry of pain ; 
these marks of suffering could not rob her 
countenance of its refinement. Her breathing 
was shallow; at times it seemed irregular; 
and wan, almost inert, the fragile figure 
seemed nearing the eternal parting with its soul. 
The silence of the sick-room was fearsomely 
ominous. 

Three weeks before, Euth, her mother, and ever- 
apprehensive Aunt Melissa had come from the 
heat of coastal Georgia to the invigorating cool- 
ness of the Southern Appalachians. They had 
come to Point View several weeks later than usual 
this year, as spring was tardy and the hot days 
at home had been few. Ruth had been most mis- 
erable for weeks before they left home, but had 
stood the trip well, and Judge Rivers had re- 
ceived an encouraging, indeed a hopeful report 
from the invalid. But a few days later a letter 
telling of another of Ruth's attacks was followed 
immediately by an urgent, distressed telegram 
which caused him to adjourn court and hasten 
to his family. 

For many years Dr. Harkins had driven 
through the mountains eight starving months, 
serving and saving the poorly housed and often 
destitute mountaineers. The tourist flood from 



74 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

the burning, summer lowlands to the mountains ' 
refreshment gave him his living. Dr. Harkins 
was as truly a missionary as though he were on 
the pay-roll of a denominational society. He had 
always helped, or the mountains had helped, or 
something had helped Ruth before, but this time 
nothing helped. The doctor had already called 
a neighboring physician; they were both per- 
plexed, and each feared to say the word which, 
in their minds, spelled her doom. For nearly 
three days Ruth had been delirious, this gentle, 
sensible, reserved girl, tossing and calling out. 
A few times she had even screamed, and her 
mother always said that she had been "too fine 
a baby to even cry out loud." For five nights 
there had been no sleep save an unnatural stupor 
produced by medicine. Mother and nurse had 
taxed their strength keeping her in bed during the 
paroxysms of her suffering, which, hour by hour, 
seemed to grow in intensity and to defy the ever- 
increasing doses of quieting drugs. She had 
recognized no one for days. Even her mother's 
voice brought back no moment of natural re- 
sponse. "It must be meningitis, ' ' Dr. Harkins 
finally said, and the other doctor nodded in agree- 
ment. And Aunt Melissa informed the neighbors 
that it was "meningitis" and that her darling 
Ruth could last but a few days. The mother's 
anxiety reiterated " meningitis, ' ' and good, level- 
headed Martha King, the nurse, knew that the 
three cases of meningitis which she had nursed 
had suffered the same way before they died. 
When Judge Rivers came, he spent but one 






LEARNING TO EAT 75 

minute in the sick-room. It was days before 
lie dared reenter. Kuth did not know him. For 
the first time in her twenty-seven years, she had 
failed to respond happily to his hearty, rich-voiced 
love-greeting. The Judge's small fortune had 
grown slowly. Only that year had the mortgage 
been finally lifted on their comfortable Georgia 
home. But in that minute at the sufferer's bed- 
side all he had was thrown into the scales. Kuth 
must be saved. She was the only daughter; she 
was a worthily beloved daughter. "No, she can- 
not be moved to Johns Hopkins; the trip is too 
rough and long; she is too weak," decided Dr. 
Harkins, and the consultant agreed. "Our only 
hope for her is to get the i brain expert' from the 
next state." Five days had passed since the 
patient had retained food. For twenty-four 
hours the tide of her strength seemed only to 
ebb. They all counted the minutes. The sum- 
mer-boarders in the little town, so many of whom 
knew the sick girl, counted the hours, for Ruth 
was much quieter — too quiet, they felt. An hour 
before, Aunt Melissa had tiptoed in to see her 
darling ; the finger-tips seemed cold in her excited 
palm, the nails looked bluish to her dreading eyes, 
and she retreated to the back porch-steps, threw 
her apron over her head and sat weaving to and 
fro, inconsolate ; nor would she look up even when 
the big motor panted into sight out of a cloud of 
dust, and stopped. "It is too late, too late," 
moaned Aunt Melissa. Dr. Harkins and Judge 
Rivers met the neurologist. The former re- 
viewed the case in a few sentences. The Judge 



76 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

simply said : ' ' Doctor, my whole savings are noth- 
ing. I would give my life for hers." 

In the sick-room tensity had given place to in- 
tensity, as with deft, skillful directness the doctor 
made his examination. He had finished ; the light 
had again been dimmed, and in the added shadow 
the haggard face seemed ashen. Motionless, 
thoughtful, interminably silent, the expert stood, 
holding the sick girl's hand. The nurse first saw 
him smile. It was a serious smile; it was a 
strangely hopeful smile — a smile which was in- 
stantly reflected in her own face and which the 
mother caught and Dr. Harkins saw. Each one 
of them was thrilled with such thrills as become 
rare when the forties have passed, thrilled even 
before they heard his words: "It is not 
meningitis. Your daughter can get well." 

In the conference which followed, Dr. Harkins 
felt that his confidence had been well placed. It 
is surprising how much the expert had discovered 
in forty minutes, and how carefully considered and 
relentlessly logical were his reasons for deciding 
that it was an "auto-toxic meningismus, secondary 
to renal and pancreatic insufficiency," which, 
translated, signifies a self -produced poison due to 
defective action of the liver and pancreas, result- 
ing in circulatory disturbance in the covering of 
the brain. Most clearly, too, he revealed that 
several of the most alarming symptoms were the 
result of the added poison of the drugs which had 
been given for the relief of the intolerable pain. 
Each step of the long road to recovery was out- 
lined with equal clearness, and the light of hope 



LEARNING TO EAT 77 

burst in strong on Dr. Harkins first, then on 
Martha King. The crushing load was lifted from 
off the Judge's heart. The promise seemed too 
good to be true, to the mother, who had seen her 
daughter go down through the years, step by step. 
It never penetrated the shadow of Aunt Melissa's 
pessimism. 

What forces had been at work to bring ten years 
of relentlessly increasing suffering, even impend- 
ing death, to Euth Kivers at twenty-seven, when 
she should have been in the glory of her young 
womanhood? "Her headaches have always been 
a mystery, ' ' her mother had said again and again, 
and this saying had been accepted by family and 
friends. Let us join hands with Understanding, 
step behind this mystery, and find its solution. 

Judge Eivers' father had been Judge Eivers, 
too. The war between the States had absorbed 
the family wealth ; still, our Judge Eivers showed 
every evidence of good living : he was always well- 
dressed, as befitted his office, portly and con- 
tented, as was also befitting, fine of color and 
always well. His daughter's illness had been 
practically the only problem in the affairs of his 
life which he had not solved to his quite reason- 
able satisfaction. His love for Euth held half of 
his life's sweetness. 

Mrs. Eivers was tall, active, almost muscular 
in type. Her brow, like her daughter's, was high. 
The quality of her Virginia blood had marked her 
face. She had always been unduly pale, but never 
ill. Controlled and reasonable, she had min- 
istered to her home with efficiency and pride. 



78 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

Aunt Melissa, her sister, five years the senior, was 
tall and strong, but her paleness had long been 
unhealthily tinted with sallowness. For years 
she had been subject to attacks of depression when 
for days she would insist upon being let alone, 
even as she let others alone. Kuth was the only 
bright spot she recognized in her life, and her 
morbidness was constantly picturing disaster for 
this object of her love. 

Euth's babyhood was a joy. Plump, cooing 
and happy, she evinced, even in her earliest days, 
evidences of her rare disposition. At eighteen 
months, how«ever, she began having spells of in- 
digestion. She always sat in her high-chair be- 
side Aunt Melissa, at the table, and rarely failed 
to get at least a taste of anything served which 
her fancy indicated. Her wise little stomach from 
time to time expressed its disapproval of such un- 
lawful liberties, but parents and aunts and grand- 
mothers, and probably most of us, are very dull 
in interpreting the protests of stomachs. So 
Euth got what she liked, and what was an equal 
misfortune, she liked what she got; and no one 
ever associated the liking and the getting with the 
poor sick stomach's periodic protests. As a girl 
Euth was not very active. There was a certain 
reserve, even in her playing, quite in keeping with 
family traditions. Mother, Aunt Melissa and the 
servants did the work — still Euth developed, 
happy, unselfish, kindly and sensitive. There was 
rigid discipline accompanying certain rules of 
conduct, and her deportment was carefully molded 
by the silent forces of family culture. They lived 






LEARNING TO EAT 79 

at the county-seat. The public schools which 
Euth attended were fairly good. As she grew 
older, while she remained thin and never ap- 
proached ruggedness, her digestive " spells' ' were 
much less frequent, and during the two years she 
spent away from home in the Convent, she was 
quite well, and one year played center on the 
second basket ball team. Two years away at 
school were all that the Judge could then afford. 
And so at eighteen she was home for good. That 
fall she began having headaches. She was read- 
ing much, so she went to Mobile and was care- 
fully fitted with glasses. The correction was not 
a strong one, but the oculist felt it would relieve 
the " abnormal sensitiveness of her eyes, which 
is probably causing her trouble." 

Throughout her years of suffering, Euth had 
always maintained the rare restraint which marks 
fineness of soul. No one ever heard her complain. 
Even her mother could not be sure that another 
attack was on, until she found Euth alone in her 
darkened room. Acquaintances, even friends, 
never heard her mention her illness. 

The midsummer months in Southern Alabama 
drive such as are able to the relief of the moun- 
tains of Tennessee and the Carolinas. The Judge 
had always felt that he should send his family 
away during July and August ; they often went in 
June when the summers were early. And these 
weeks of change proved, year after year, the 
most helpful influences that came to Euth. She 
always improved and would usually remain 
stronger until after Thanksgiving. But with ir- 



80 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

regular periodicity the blinding, prostrating head- 
aches would return — a week of pain, nausea and 
prostration. Yet Ruth never asked for, nor took 
medicine, unless it was ordered by the doctor, and 
then more in consideration of the desires of her 
family, for the unnatural sensations, produced by 
most of the remedies she was given, seemed but 
the substitution of one discomfort for another. 
The only exercise that counted, which this girl 
ever had, was during her weeks at Point View. 
The stimulation of the invigorating mountain air 
seemed to get into her blood, and after a few weeks 
with her friendly mountains she could climb the 
highest with little apparent fatigue. At home, the 
country was flat, the roads sandy, and even horse- 
back riding uninteresting. She had never been 
taught any strengthening form of daily home- 
exercise, and so she suffered on. While the 
glasses brought comfort, they lessened, for but a 
short time, the number and the intensity of her 
attacks. Several physicians were consulted and 
several varying courses of treatment undertaken, 
but no betterment came which lasted, and the head- 
aches remained a mystery, not only to her mother, 
but to others who seriously tried to help. As we 
are behind the scenes, we need no longer delay 
the mystery's solution. It was not eyes, they 
were accurately corrected; it was not. stomach, as 
much stomach treatment proved; it was not 
anaemia, or the many excellent tonics that had 
been prescribed would have cured ; it was not dis- 
placed vertebrae nor improperly acting nerves, or 
the manipulations and vibrations and deep knead- 



LEARNING TO EAT 81 

ings of the specialists in mechanical treatment 
would have rescued her years before. It was, and 
here is the secret — her mother's wonderful table! 

The war had brought ruinous, financial losses 
to most Virginia families. As a result, Ruth's 
mother had been taught, in minute detail, the 
high art of the best cookery of the first families 
of Virginia. And how she could cook, or make 
the colored cook cook! The Rivers' table had, for 
years, been the standard of the county-seat. Mrs. 
Rivers' spiced hams, fig preserves, brandied plum- 
pudding, stuffed roast-duck, fruit salads, all made 
by recipes handed down through several genera- 
tions, could not be excelled in richness and tooth- 
someness. No simple dishes were known at the 
Rivers' table; these, for those poor mortals who 
knew not the inner art. Double cream, stimulat- 
ing seasonings, sauces rarely spiced, the sort that 
recreate worn-out appetites, were never lacking at 
a Rivers' meal. Ruth had been overfed, had been 
wrongly fed since babyhood. 

The expert said hope lay in taking her back 
to babyhood and feeding her for days as though 
she were a four months ' child. He said she must 
be taught to eat; that her salvation lay in a few 
foods of plebeian simplicity, foods which almost 
any one could get anywhere, foods which did not 
involve long hours of preparation according to 
priceless recipes. He said also that certain other 
foods were vicious, such matter-of-course foods 
on the Rivers' table, foods which Mrs. Rivers 
would have felt humiliated to omit from a meal 
of her ordering, and he insisted that these must 



82 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

be lastingly denied this young woman with pre- 
maturely exhausted, digestive glands. The proc- 
ess of her reeducation, succinctly expressed as it 
was in a few sentences, called for tedious months 
of care, of denial and of effort. It demanded that 
which was more than taxing in many details. So 
for Ruth Eivers long weeks were spent in a hos- 
pital-bed. She was fed on the simplest of foods, 
each feeding measured with the same care as were 
her few medicines, for now truly her food was 
medicine, and her chief medicine was food. 
Massage seemed at last to bring help, for even in 
bed she gained in strength. 

It was several weeks before her mind was en- 
tirely clear, but she was soon being taught the 
science of food; this included an understanding 
outline of food chemistry, of the processes of di- 
gestion, of food values, of the relation of food to 
work, of the vital importance of muscular activity 
and the relation of muscle-use to nervous health. 
Her beloved sweets and her strong coffee, the 
only friends of her suffering days, were gradually 
buried even from thought in this accumulation of 
new and understood truths — most reasonable and 
sane truths. Forty pounds she gained in twelve 
weeks. She had never weighed over one hundred 
and twenty -five. She has never weighed less than 
one hundred and forty-five since, and, as she is 
five feet eight, her one hundred and forty-five 
pounds brought her a new symmetry which, with 
her high-bred face, transformed the waxen invalid 
into an attractive beauty. She learned to do 
manual work. She learned to use every muscle 



LEARNING TO EAT 83 

the Lord had given her, every day she lived. An 
appetite unwhipped by condiments or unstimu- 
lated by artifice, an appetite for wholesome food, 
has made eating a satisfaction she never knew in 
the old days. 

This was ten years ago. Many changes have 
come in the Bivers ' household, the most far-reach- 
ing of which is probably the revolution which 
shook its culinary department from center to cir- 
cumference. What saved daughter must be good 
for them all. Father is less portly, more active, 
less ruddy. Some of the color he lost was found 
by the mother. Aunt Melissa disappears into her 
gloom-days but rarely, and has smiling hours un- 
thought in the past. And Ruth has proven that 
the mystery was adequately solved. She married 
the kind of man so excellent a woman should have, 
and went through the trying weeks of her mother- 
hood and has cared for her boy through the de- 
manding months of early childhood without a com- 
plication. And all this in the face of Aunt 
Melissa's reiterated forebodings ! 



CHAPTER IX 
THE MAN WITH THE HOE 

In the early years of the eighteenth century, 
a hardy family lived frugally and simply on a 
few, fertile Norman acres. Their home was but a 
hut of stone and clay and thatch. It was sur- 
rounded by a carefully attended vineyard and 
fruit trees which, in the springtime, made the spot 
most beautiful. On this May day the passerby 
would have stopped that he might carry away 
this scene of perfect pastoral charm. The blos- 
soming vines almost hid the house, the blooming 
trees perfumed the morning breeze, and it all 
spoke for simple peace and contentment. But at 
this hour neither peace nor contentment could 
have been found within. Pierre, the eldest son, 
was almost fiercely resenting the quiet counsel of 
his father and the tearful pleadings of his mother. 
Pierre loved Adrienne, their neighbor 's daughter. 
The two had grown up side by side, each had 
brought to the other all that their dreams had 
wished through the years of waiting. Pierre had 
long worked extra hours and they both had saved 
and now, nearing thirty, there was enough, and 
they could marry. But the edict had gone forth 
that Huguenot marriages would no longer be 
recognized by the state ; that the children of such 

84 



THE MAN WITH THE HOE 85 

a union would be without civil standing. So 
Pierre and Adrienne had decided to leave France, 
nor did the protests of their elders delay their 
going. It was a solemn little ceremony, their 
marriage, a ceremony practically illegal in their 
land. Rarely are weddings more solemn or 
bridal trips more sad, for to England they were 
starting that same day, never to see their dear 
France again, never to prune or to gather in the 
little vineyard, never again to look into the faces 
of their own kin. 

It was not a worldly-wise change. Wages in 
England were very low and there were no vine- 
yards in that chilly land, and Pierre worked and 
died a plain English farm-hand, blessed only with 
health, remarkable strength, and a wretched, but 
happy home. Much of their parents' sturdiness 
and independence was passed on into the blood 
of their four children, two boys and two girls, for 
in 1748, after long saving, they all left England 
for America, "the promised land," and sailed for 
New Amsterdam. Husbandmen they were, and 
for two generations painfully, gravely, they tilled 
the semi-productive soil of their little farm, west 
of the Hudson. Land was cheap in the New 
World. Their vegetables and fruit grew, the 
market in the city grew, and the van der Veere 
farms grew, and peace and contentment abode 
there. 

After the War of 1812 two healthy, robust van 
der Veere brothers tramped into New York City 
each carrying in his bundle nearly $1000.00, his 
share of their father's recently divided farm. 



$6 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

They started a green-grocery shop. One attended 
the customers, the other, through the summer 
months, worked their little truck garden away out 
on the country road, a road which is to-day New 
York's Great White Way. They prospered. 
One married, and his two boys founded the 
van der Veere firm of importers. From the East 
this company's ship, later its ships, brought 
rare curios, oriental tapestries and fine rugs to 
make elegant the brown-stone front drawing- 
rooms of aristocratic, residential New York of 
that generation. The sons of one of these 
brothers to-day constitute the honorable van der 
Veere firm. The other brother left one son, Clif- 
ford, and two daughters, Dora and Henrietta. 

It is into the life-history of Clifford van der 
Veere that we now intrude. He was a sturdy 
youth, with no illnesses, save occasional sore 
throats which left him when he shed his tonsils. 
His father was a reserved, kindly man, a quietly 
efficient man. His competitors never understood 
the sure growth of his success — he was so unpre- 
tentious in all that he did. Clifford 's mother was 
a sensible woman, untouched by the pride of 
wealth and the snobbery of station. Their home, 
facing Central Park, stood for elegance and 
restraint. There were no other children for ten 
years after the son's birth, then came the two 
sisters, which domestic arrangement probably 
proved an important factor in deciding the rest 
of our story. From early boyhood Clifford was 
orderly, obedient, studious and quietly indus- 
trious. He made no trouble for parents or teach- 



THE MAN WITH THE HOE 87 

ers — other mothers always spoke of him as 
"good." He was thirteen when his only sinful 
escapade happened. Some of the Third Avenue 
boys shared the playgrounds in the park with 
Clifford's crowd. They all smoked, some chewed 
and the more self-important of them swore, and 
thereby, one day, our Fifth Avenue young hopeful 
was contaminated. It was a savory-smelling wad 
of fine-cut. It burned, a little went the wrong 
way and it strangled, but the joy of ejecting a 
series of amber projectiles was Clifford's. An- 
other mouthful was ready for exhibition purposes 
when some appreciative admirer enthusiastically 
clapped our boy between the shoulder-blades and 
most of his mouth's contents, fluid and solid, was 
swallowed. Somehow Clifford got home, but 
landed in a wilted heap on the big couch, chalk- 
white, and sick beyond expression. The doctor 
was called and, discovering the cause, made him 
helpfully sicker. The next morning Clifford's 
father gravely offered to give him $500.00, when 
he was twenty-one, if he would not taste tobacco 
again until that time. Either the memory of first- 
chew sensations or the doctor's ipecac, or the force 
of habit, or something, kept him from ever tasting 
it again. 

Later, Clifford went to Columbia and was 
quietly popular with the quieter fellows. It would 
seem that had any little devils not been strained 
out of his blood by his long line of Huguenot 
ancestry, they had followed the fate of the fine- 
cut, for no one who knew Clifford van der Veere 
was ever anxious about the probity of his conduct. 



88 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

He did not take to the importing business, while 
his cousins early showed a natural capacity for 
the work of the big firm in all its branches. Clif- 
ford's parents, too, seemed to feel that it was 
time that there be a professional member of their 
honorable family. Moreover the property was 
large, and the younger sisters would require a 
guardian, and the estate an administrator. So 
Clifford finished the law-course. Nor was it many 
years until the family fortune of approximately 
one million dollars in real estate, securities and 
mortgages was left him to administer for himself 
and the two sisters. Thus before thirty the re- 
sponsibility of these many thousands swept down 
upon him. Limited in practical contact with the 
world, geographically, politically, socially, having 
learned little of the play-side of life, he was by 
inheritance, training and inclination a conserv- 
ative. He had never practiced law. He never 
tried a case, but he now opened a downtown office 
where he punctually arrived at ten o'clock and 
methodically spent the morning, carefully, per- 
sonally managing all the details of the entailed 
estate. He was essentially conscientious and, as 
the years passed, there was no lessening of in- 
terest in his devotion to each transaction, large or 
small. There were no losses, though his con- 
servatism turned him away from many golden op- 
portunities which knocked at the door of his 
wealth, the acceptance of which would have 
doubled the estate in any ten-year period of these 
days of New York's magnificent expansion. 
He was nearly forty when he married a quiet, 



THE MAN WITH THE HOE 89 

good woman who added little that was new, who 
most conscientiously subtracted nothing of the 
old, from his now systematic life. They both 
realized that their Fifth Avenue home was rapidly 
growing out of date, so for nearly five years they 
spent their spare hours daily, in the, to Clifford, 
vital and seemingly unending details of modern- 
izing the old house. It was during those days 
when the plans so carefully considered were be- 
ing realized in granite and marble and polished 
woods, that Mrs. van der Veere felt the first dis- 
tressing touch of anxiety. Her husband seemed 
unduly particular. At times he would be pain- 
fully uncertain about minute and minor details of 
construction and on a few occasions unprecedent- 
edly failed to get to the office at all, delayed by 
protracted discussions of the advisability of cer- 
tain changes, long since decided upon, discussions 
which shook the confidence of architect and con- 
tractor in both his sagacity and judgment. For- 
tunately Mrs. van der Veere proved a wholesome 
counselor and her opinions often settled details 
her husband, alone, apparently could not have de- 
cided. At last the great new house was finished; 
it was such a home as the van der Veeres should 
have. Indecision largely disappeared for three 
quite normal years, office details only now and 
then ruffling the smooth normality of Mr. van der 
Veere 's life. Then with the early spring nights 
came an unexplained insomnia. He would waken 
at five y four, even three o 'clock, and, unable to get 
back to sleep, would read until morning. The 
doctor found little to excite his apprehension, but 



90 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

prescribed golf, so three afternoons a week all 
summer and fall two hours were reserved for the 
links. He was better, still the doctor insisted on 
three months, that winter, in Southern California 
where he could keep up his play. Here he did 
eighteen holes a day for weeks at a time, yet some 
of the nights were haunted by scruples about 
neglecting his administrative duties. They re- 
turned home in the spring, and a moderately com- 
fortable year and a half followed. Then things 
went wrong rapidly and badly. Peremptorily he 
was ordered away from all "work" to Southern 
France, later to Italy for the winter and to Switz- 
erland for the next summer. And as the Alps 
have given of their strength to other needing thou- 
sands, so they ministered to him. He began 
climbing. His wife thought it was a new interest. 
Certainly that was a factor, but he became am- 
bitious and went wherever he could find guides to 
take him. He returned home very rugged the 
fall he was fifty. Still with reason, Mrs. van der 
Veere was anxious, an anxiety shared by the 
family doctor. Between them they planned 
for him a sort of model life, truly a circumscribed 
life, and for five years wife and associates pro- 
tected him from any possible strain, and for five 
years it worked successfully. Then in less than a 
month, almost like a bolt from the blue, all former 
symptoms returned, aggravated in form, bringing 
most unwelcome new ones in their trail. The 
family doctor called in a neurologist who, after 
examining the nervous man, spoke seriously of 



THE MAN WITH THE HOE 91 

serious possibilities, and advised serious meas- 
ures. 

Mr. van der Veere was now fifty-five years old, 
short, almost stocky in build, dark-skinned, with 
steel-gray hair and mustache. He was depressed 
in mien though always well-bred in bearing. He 
was not excitable and outwardly showed little of 
his suffering. Clifford van der Veere had always 
taken life and his duties seriously. For years 
his fear of making mistakes had been a chronic 
source of energy leakage — now it was a night- 
mare. All he did cost an exhausting price in the 
effort of decision. Duty and fear had long made 
a battle-ground of his soul, and when he realized 
that he had broken down again from ' ' overwork, ' ' 
as they all expressed it, the depression of melan- 
choly was added to the weight he so quietly bore. 
Yet this man of many responsibilities and in- 
terests had never truly worked. Since he left col- 
lege he had played at work. Effort had been ex- 
pended never more conscientiously. He was ever 
ready to give added hours of attention to prob- 
lems referred to him. His intentions were true, 
but he did not know how to work. He did not 
know how to separate the serious from the un- 
important, and he had never added the leaven 
of humor to the day's duties. An unusually well- 
equipped man, physically and mentally, he should 
have found the responsibilities of his administra- 
torship but play. Had he been living right, he 
could have multiplied his efficiency three-fold and 
been the better for the larger doing. His wife 



92 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

felt he must "rest," and so did the family doctor; 
he himself was practically past arguing or dis- 
agreeing. 

But the rest-cure which the neurologist pre- 
scribed was certainly unique. It may have been 
wrongly named. Mr. van der Veere was a man 
of unusually strong physique. Nature had 
equipped him with a muscular system better than 
nine-tenths of his fellowmen possess, but he had 
never utilized it. For many generations his for- 
bears had wrung food and life and, unconsciously, 
health from the soil. He was three generations 
from touch with mother earth, and back to the 
soil he was sent. He was taught to work increas- 
ing hours of common, manual labor. For weeks 
he did his part of the necessary drudgery of the 
world. He shoveled coal, he spaded in the 
garden, he worked on the public roads, he trans- 
planted trees, he hoed common weeds with a com- 
mon hoe, he tramped, he toiled and he sweat. 
The need for physical labor was in his blood. He 
needed his share of it, as do we all. And his 
blood answered exultantly, as good blood always 
does, to the call of honest toil. Within a month 
he realized a keenness for the work of the day. 
His fine muscles took on hardness, they seemed 
to double in size, and strength came, and with it 
not only a willingness but an eagerness which 
transformed that strength into productive effort. 
With the willingness to do what his hands found 
to do came sleep, for his nerves — bred as they 
had been in good stock — rejoiced when they found 
him living as they had for years begged him to 



THE MAN WITH THE HOE 93 

live. A fifteen-year-old appetite came to the 
fifty-five-year-old man, and transformation 
wrought happy changes in his face and bearing. 
Indecision faded, introspection disappeared, 
and a decision came which was to forever put 
indecision out of his way. A decision which 
brought the peace and contentment to the van der 
Veere Fifth Avenue home, which religious intol- 
erance had robbed from the van der Veeres in 
their stone-thatched hut in far-away Normandy, 
a simple decision, not requiring brilliance nor a 
college education, nor a professional training, nor 
even a loving helpmate to accomplish : ' * Six days 
shall I labor not only with my brain but with my 
hands, and the seventh day shall I rest." 



CHAPTEE X 
THE TINE ART OF PLAY 

It was her earliest recollection, and parts of it 
were not clear. There were those big men carry- 
ing in her father, and her mother's face looking 
so strange, and her father looking so strange with 
the white cloths about his head, and the strange 
faces of doctors and neighbors she had not seen 
before. Then the strange stillness and the 
strange new fear when her father did not move 
and they all were so quiet. These memories were 
rather blurred; she was not always sure which 
were memories of the events or which had grown 
from what she had afterwards heard. But of the 
funeral she was very sure, for she could never 
forget those beautiful silvered handles on the 
shining wooden coffin, or her resentment toward 
the women dressed in black who would not let her 
touch these — the prettiest things she had ever 
seen. The colts had run away, frightened, when 
an empty sap-barrel fell off the sled, and her 
father had been thrown against a tree and brought 
home with a fractured skull, to live unconscious 
two days, and to be buried in the shiny coffin with 
the silver handles. 

There had been an older child who died as a 
baby of eight months, and so Widow Gilmore was 

94 



THE FINE ART OF PLAY 95 

left at thirty-five with her only child, Hattie, and 
a hundred-and-forty-acre farm, with the house in 
town. Mrs. Gilmore had good business sense. 
She lived alone with Hattie, ran the farm, and 
soon her interests degenerated into a slavery to 
household and farm details. 

The widow had taught school until she was 
nearly thirty. She was not handsome, and the 
meager sentiment of her soul easily disintegrated 
into morbidness. She wore black the rest of her 
days, and for the rest of her days church services 
were hours of public mourning. The Gilmore 
"parlor' ' was closed after the funeral, and Hattie 
never got a glimpse within its almost gruesomely 
sacred walls, save as she timidly peeped in during 
cleaning days or, rarely, when her mother tear- 
fully led her in and they stood before the life- 
size crayon portrait of the departed. Even in her 
quiet play, Hattie must keep on the other side 
of the house. 

Hattie Gilmore was a sober child and lived a 
sober childhood. She was not strong; nothing 
had ever been done to make her so. Play and 
playmates were always limited. She and her 
mother belonged to Coopersville's "better class," 
most of the town children living below the bridge 
where the homes of the factory people crowded. 
Boys were "too rough," and the other girls were 
"not nice enough"; so she played much alone — 
such play as it was, with her two china dolls and 
the tin stove and tin dishes, which made up her 
toys. There was little to stimulate her imagina- 
tion and nothing to develop comradeships and 



96 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

friendships. For hours of her play-time she sat 
inertly on the front stoop and watched the pass- 
ersby, for there had never been any thought of 
training her in the art of play. Instead, she was 
warned to keep her dress clean and rather sharply 
reprimanded if, perchance, dress or apron was 
torn. So she stood and watched the school-play 
of the other children, never knowing the thrills 
of a game of "tag," nor the reckless adventures 
of "black man"; even "Pussy wants a corner" 
disarranged her painfully curled curls and was 
rarely risked. "Hop-scotch," when the figure 
was small and lady-like, was practically the limit 
of Hattie 's "violent exercise." So she did not 
develop — how could she? She remained under- 
sized. Moreover, her play-days were sadly short- 
ened, for they early merged into work-days. 
Housekeeping cares were many, as her mother 
planned her household. According to York 
State traditions Hattie was early taught domestic 
details, and for over a generation seriously, slav- 
ishly followed the routine established by her 
mother who doggedly, to the last, knew no shadow 
of turning, and went to her honestly earned long 
rest within a week after she took to her bed. 

Hattie finished the town high school, and had 
taken her school-work so seriously that she was 
valedictorian — being too good to soil your dress 
ought to bring some reward. Her teacher 
proudly referred to her as an example of the fine 
work a student could do who was not disturbed 
by outside influences. Commencement night, the 
same summer she was seventeen, she was almost 



THE FINE ART OF PLAY 97 

pretty. The natural flush of success and of pub- 
lic recognition was heightened by the reflected 
flush from the red roses she wore ; and Ben Stim- 
son, the old doctor's son, carried the image of this, 
her most beautiful self, in his big heart for many 
years. He was then twenty, a sophomore at col- 
lege, and a wholesome fellow to look upon. He 
took Hattie home that night. It was early June, 
and they dallied on the way. She was so nearly 
happy that her conscience became suspicious. 
She felt something awful was going to happen ! — 
and she almost did not care. They had reached 
the front steps of her home. Ominously, silence 
fell. Suddenly impulsive Ben crushed her to him 
and — must it be told? — kissed her, kissed Hattie 
Gilmore's unsullied lips. For a moment her 
heart leaped almost into wanton expression. 
A moment more — another kiss, and she might 
have been compromised, she might have re- 
sponded to the thrilling love which was call- 
ing to her heart, but the goddess of her 
destiny willed otherwise. The front door opened ; 
an angular form appeared; an acrid voice 
fairly curdled love-thoughts as it assailed 
the impetuous lover. Within a minute he was 
slinking away and the rescued maiden was safe 
in the indignant, resenting arms of her mother 
— safe, but for years to be tempted and troubled 
by remorse and wishes, to be haunted by unac- 
cepted hopes. "Ben Stimson is a free lance. He 
can't help being, for his father's a free thinker 
and the boy never went to Sunday-school a dozen 
times in his life. Let him join the church and 



98 OUK NERVOUS FRIENDS 

show folks he wants to live right; then, if he 
courts you regular, I won't mind, but he is too 
free and easy. I call that kind dangerous," her 
mother said. 

Ben Stimson wrote Hattie a note the next day, 
which she did not answer, but kept for years. 
Two summers later he drove up to the house, look- 
ing mighty fine in the doctor's new runabout, driv- 
ing the high-stepping bay, natty in a "brand-new" 
tan harness — the first Hattie had ever seen. He 
asked her to come with him for a drive, and again 
her mother's nipping negative influenced her deci- 
sion against the pleadings of a yearning, lonely 
heart. 

Mrs. Gilmore finally died an exclusive, matter- 
of-fact, joyless death, even as she had lived. Ben 
came to the funeral. He called on Hattie the next 
day. Inconstancy was not one of his weaknesses, 
and the veil of her Commencement beauty had 
clung to her through these many years, in her old 
lover's eyes. He was again impetuous and of- 
fended every conservative propriety of Hattie 's 
dutiful melancholy by asking her to marry him — 
and this actually in the room where her mother's 
funeral was held the day before! What could 
Hattie do but burst into tears and leave the room — 
and Ben, and the secretly cherished hopes of many 
years, and a real home with a cheerily happy hus- 
band and those children which might have been 
hers — to leave all these and more in homage to the 
sacredness of her mother's memory. 

Ten gray years dragged by. Hattie kept a few 
boarders so as not to be alone in the house. She 



THE FINE ART OF PLAY 99 

would take no children. They were too noisy and 
kept the place in disorder. Ben's patience had 
finally exhausted, though he finished his medical 
course and had been practicing nearly ten years 
before he married. No other one for whom she 
could care even called. 

The farm did well. The lone woman had over 
$20,000 in the bank and the property was worth as 
much more. But the brightest days were gray. 
At forty-five she weighed ninety-four. She ate 
barely enough to keep going. Her digestion was 
wretched. Her pride and her will alone made her 
able to sit through meals or through the occasional 
neighbors' calls. She spent hours alone in her 
room, dumb, dark-minded, with an unrelenting 
heartache and pains which racked every organ. 
Her sleep was fitful and she dreamed of Ben down- 
stairs in a casket, again and again, until she fairly 
feared the night. When she took her nerve 
medicine, she seemed tied, bound hand and foot in 
that parlor of death, held by a sleep of terror. 
Then Ben would move about in the casket and 
make tortured faces at her, and some horrible 
times he accused, even berated her. Finally an 
awful dream, two caskets, her mother in one, Ben 
in the other, each railing and both showering 
abuse upon her. She was in bed for weeks. 
Another doctor came and then — praise be! her 
deliverer. 

Jane Andrews was the old Presbyterian min- 
ister's daughter. She had lived in Coopersville 
until she was twenty-four, giving her father an 
efficient, devoted daughter's care through his long, 



100 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

last illness. The family means had always been 
limited, and when the earner was laid away, she 
at once responded to the practical call. There 
were no hospitals near ; so she left home and went 
into training in a small institution on the Hud- 
son. This is a hospital where sickness is recog- 
nized as more than infections and broken, mangled 
members. Here she learned well the saving balm 
of joy in making whole wretched bodies with their 
more wretched souls. For five years she had 
lived in the midst of benefits brought by the in- 
spiration of right-feeling attitudes. She knew 
full well the healing potency of the play-spirit. 
Her insight into life was already deep, her out- 
look upon life high and heartful. Then her 
mother failed; she came home and for three 
months had been beautifying the final weeks. 
This more than wise woman now came to 
nurse poor Hattie, came to companion her back 
to health, came as a revelation to this mistaken 
and wearied one, of a better way. After forty- 
five years of the playless life of a serf to blight- 
ing seriousness, the wonder is that sourness had 
not entered to hopelessly curdle all chances for 
joyous living. 

Hattie Gilmore had to be taught to play. Dur- 
ing the weeks of her rest-treatment the stronger 
woman took the weaker back to girlhood. She 
brought some dolls. They made clothes for them. 
They dressed and undressed them and put them 
to bed. They taught them to say their prayers 
and prepared their little meals, teaching them 
' ' table manners/ ' and they made them play as 



THE FINE ART OF PLAY 101 

children should play. A sunshine scrapbook was 
made. It was a gorgeous conglomeration of 
colors, of fairies and children, of birds and 
flowers, and of awkward, but telling, hand-illus- 
trations of the joys of being nursed and, 
prophetically, of the greater joys of being well. 
They played "Authors," "Flinch," and even 
"Old Maid." Splendid half -hours were spent in 
reading gloriously happy lives. Stories were told 
— happiness stories, and jokes and conundrums 
invented. One day Hattie laughed aloud, for 
which heartlessness her morbid conscience at once 
wrung forth a stream of tears; but that 
wondrously artful nurse held a mirror before a 
woefully twisting face, and her tactful comments 
brought back the smiles. That laugh was the first 
warming beam of a summer of happiness which 
was to golden the autumn of a bleak life made 
blest. Then Hattie Gilmore learned to play a 
score of out-of-door games and to understand 
sports. She learned to see the beauties in 
the roadside flowers — "weeds" her mother had 
called most of them. She learned to read 
glorious stories in the ever-transforming clouds. 
The neighbors' children were invited, timidly 
they came at first, later they were eager 
to come and play at "Aunt Hattie 's." Three 
fine, determining events happened that fall to 
complete the salvation of this woman who was so 
fast learning happiness-living. 

They, Jane and Hattie, friends now rather than 
nurse and patient, made the daintiest possible 
cap and cloak for Dr. Ben's last baby, and sent it 



102 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

with a hearty, merry greeting. This was a peace- 
offering to the past, more efficient probably than 
much blood which has been shed on sacrificial 
altars. Then they made a trip which came near 
being a solemn occasion, it was so portentously 
important. They went to the church-orphanage, 
remained several days and brought home a lusty 
three-year-old bunch of mischief, who was for- 
ever to wreck all the gloom-sanctity of that old 
home. Hereafter even the parlor of mourning 
was to be assailed with shouts of glee ; some things 
planted in Hattie 's fl'ower beds were foredoomed 
not to come up; no longer could the front lawn 
look like a freshly swept carpet. Eoy was legally 
adopted by Hattie and became her proudest pos- 
session. Finally, her eyes were opened to that 
rarely sighted, fair vista of the sacred play-life, 
the play-life so long denied this good woman. 
Never agfain were housekeeping worries to be 
mentioned. They were not recognized. When 
things went wrong, they went merrily wrong. 
What could not be cured was joked about. The 
whole business of home-making became a glad- 
some game. 

Life for Hattie G-ilmore, for Eoy, for the 
neighbors' children, and for some of the mothers 
of dull old Coopersville came to be lived as the 
Father intended His children to live, when one 
almost old woman found the Fountain of Youth 
revealed by the fine art of play. A blessed revela- 
tion it is to every life when the joy of play robs 
the working hours of their tedium and weariness. 
He lives as master who makes play of his work. 



CHAPTER XI 
THE TANGLED SKEIN 

Warm balls of comfort, a thousand sheep feed 
on the hillside, turning herb and green growing 
things into food and wool. After the shearing 
and the washing, ten thousand soft strands are 
spun into a single thread, and each length of 
thread is a promise of warmth and protection for 
years to come. Then the wool-white yarn is dyed 
in colors symbolizing the strength of the navy, 
the loyalty of the army or the honor of the alma 
mater. Reeled into a skein, the wool is now all 
but ready for the fingers of the knitter ; it has but 
to be wound in a ball. Yet here danger lurks. 
An inadvertent twist or a simple tangle quickly 
knots the thread, unless thoughtful patience 
rescues. Recklessness means hopeless disarray, 
and the soft fluff of warming color becomes un- 
kempt disorder, a confused mass from which the 
thread broken again and again is extracted. The 
work of careful hands has been reduced to lasting 
defect. 

Francis Weston was reared in one of the pros- 
perous, middle-Western cities, on the northern 
bank of the Ohio. The family had succeeded well 
and represented large manufacturing interests. 
All burdens which money could lift were removed 

103 



104 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

from his shoulders. He finished college in the 
East and entered business, never having felt a 
hand's weight of responsibility. As vice-presi- 
dent and director in one of the banks organized 
largely by the family's capital, he was free to 
follow his impulses. No details demanded his at- 
tention; other minds in the bank cared for these. 

Across the river a southern town nestled in cozy 
comfort, having for generations maintained a con- 
scious superiority to its smoking, northern neigh- 
bor. Several handsome daughters of Kentucky 
aristocracy gave tangible evidence of the tone of 
the community, and Francis Weston's impulses 
made his trips across the river increasingly fre- 
quent. And, as it should have been, North and 
South were joined closer by one more golden link, 
when an only daughter of Kentucky wealth be- 
came Mrs. Weston. The marriage contract held 
but one stipulation: their home was to be in the 
bride 's village. It looked as though one of Love 's 
best plans had succeeded. The husband proved 
deeply devoted to his wife and the new home. 
The bank continued to take most excellent care 
of itself, and his trips north, across the river, 
were but occasional. The Weston mansion and 
estate in every way befitted the combined wealth 
of the two families, and the wife gave much time 
to making it increasingly attractive, and to the 
training of her good servants. The husband read 
much, exercised little, and the only reason for 
gentle protest from the wife was his excessive 
smoking. 

A little daughter came, but as though Fate 



THE TANGLED SKEIN 105 

would say, "I am Master," she lived but a few 
days. The shock was cruel, and the father seemed 
to suffer the more intensely. Mrs. Weston took 
her sorrow in a fine way; she seemed to 
realize that she, of the two, must turn away the 
threat of morbidness. But the touch of Fate was 
not to be denied. Still, three years later, it would 
seem that nothing but thankfulness and abounding 
joy should have filled the Weston home — a son 
came. They named him Harold. The father's 
solicitude for the little fellow's life was as 
pathetic as it was abnormal. The bank was now 
unvisited for months by its first vice-president. 
As the boy grew the father gave him more and 
more of himself. He was his companion in play, 
and personally taught him, seriously taking up 
study after study, until at sixteen Harold was 
well prepared for college — scholastically pre- 
pared, we should amend — for unconsciously the 
father had kept him from the normal comrade- 
ship with boys of his age. Much of excellent 
theory the youth had, some wisdom beyond his 
years, but no knowledge of denials, no spirit of 
give and take, no thought of the other fellow — 
his rights and wrongs. In spite of their long 
walks and rides on gaited Kentucky thorough- 
breds, Harold was not physically robust, so it was 
decided to send him to a southern college, and 
he went to Vanderbilt. During his second year 
the father had a long siege of typhoid, and re- 
covery was pitiably imperfect. His mentality did 
not return with his body strength — he remained 
a harmless, weak-minded man. Much care was 



106 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

exercised to keep the details from Harold, though 
both families were unwilling to have the broken 
man sent to an institution, and for four years 
professional nurses attended him at home. In 
spite of the mother's best efforts to distract and 
neutralize, the son could but feel the unnatural- 
ness of the home atmosphere and profoundly miss 
the devotion of his father. Still from what little 
he did see of the invalid, it was a relief when, 
four years later, an accident took him away. 

Harold Weston's college life held true to his 
training. Quietly friendly, he mixed poorly; 
mentally well-equipped, he was an excellent 
student — brilliant in some classes, good in all. 
Athletics and fraternities, feeds and "femmies" 
dissipated none of his energies, nor added aught 
to the fulness of his living. He continued his col- 
lege work until he had received both Bachelor's 
and Master's degrees. The spring he was twenty- 
three, he returned home for the summer, an at- 
tractive young man. A classmate had interested 
him in tennis, for which he showed some natural 
aptitude. The year's work had taxed him lightly. 
The skein of yarn gave promise of a perfect 
fabric. 

Mother and son had a happy summer. She 
saw to it that the home was alive with young 
folks, and one week-end party followed another. 
Harold had decided to study law, and nothing in- 
dicated that he would meet any obstacles during 
his course at Law School. All believed he was 
sufficiently strong to take this at Yale. There 
were brilliant minds in his classes — he was ac- 



THE TANGLED SKEIN 107 

customed to lead. He dropped his tennis, he 
studied hard. In his second year he began losing 
weight after the holidays, and found difficulty in 
getting to sleep; his appetite became irregular, 
and his smoking, which had been moderate for 
some years, became a dependence. His nervous 
system was pretty well "shot up" — it had never 
been case-hardened. A weight of apprehension 
had become constantly present, and he let its 
burden depress him miserably. One of his pro- 
fessors, noting his appearance, talked with him 
earnestly, and with lay acumen decided his diges- 
tion was "out of fix" and told him of a "fine New 
York doctor." The stomach specialist worthily 
stood high in his profession. The examination 
was painstaking and exhaustive; the diagnosis 
seemed ominous to the morbid patient ; the whole 
process was a revelation to him of organs and 
functions and laws of eating and drinking un- 
heard in his years of study. "Chronic intestinal 
indigestion with food decomposition and auto- 
intoxication, augmented by nicotine," the doctor 
said. There had been a distinct lessening 
of efficiency in his law-school work. Study for 
the first time in his life required wearying effort. 
He did not feel himself, he was facing his first 
test, he was meeting his first strain. For the 
first time the skein was being mussed. 

Harold Weston began reading, indiscriminately, 
literature on food and digestion and diets. The 
doctor had given him a strict regimen. He began 
to note minutely the foods he ordered and to 
question the wholesomeness of their quality and 



108 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

preparation. Caution and over emphasis on de- 
tails of food and habits of eating rapidly de- 
veloped. Later not only the food in the dish, but 
most unhappily the foods he had swallowed were 
scrutinized by every alertness of sensation and 
imagination, and most damagingly did he be- 
come a victim of the unwholesome symptom- 
studying habit. Within two months his discern- 
ing physician recognized that the self-interest 
which had started in the physical damage of rapid 
eating of rich foods was developing into an ob- 
session more detrimental than the original phys- 
ical disorder, and thought it wise for him to dis- 
continue study and return home to rest for the 
summer. The thread was tangled. 

The home-coming was not happy. From the 
first meal, the specialist's warnings were in con- 
flict with the home diet, and resentments were not 
withheld from the good old dishes which had for 
a generation bedecked the home table. The deli- 
cacy instinctive to the family and to his earlier 
life was cast aside, and the subjects of food and 
its digestion, of food-poisoning and its conse- 
quences, made unpleasant every meal. Inno- 
cently and seriously the mother pointed to her 
good health and to rugged ancestors who had lived 
long and hale, unconsciously superior to food and 
drink. He brooked none of her suggestions, and 
finally when she honestly could not see it all his 
way, in the heat of his intensity he accused her 
of being to blame for all his trouble : she had fed 
him wrong from the first ; she had fed his father 



THE TANGLED SKEIN 109 

wrong; the New York doctor had told him that 
certain mental diseases could be caused by food- 
poisoning, and his father would not have been a 
mental wreck, nor his own career cut short, had 
she only known what wives and mothers of this 
generation should know, and set a table which 
was not a laboratory of poison. These ideas, 
once accepted, never left him. They formed a 
theme which, after finding expression, recurred 
with ominously increasing frequency. A year 
before, Harold Weston was a kindly fellow, almost 
retiring, but with a peculiar lighting of his face 
in response which endeared him to feminine 
hearts. On a variety of subjects he was well- 
informed, his professors bespoke for him a high 
and honorable standing in the judiciary, but, from 
the mass of this fine mind's possibilities, a second 
wretched choice was now made. " Father's 
typhoid affected his mind, his brain must have 
been defective ; my heredity is imperfect ; my first 
illness damages my class work. I can never go on 
in my profession, there is no future for me but 
suffering." From this wrecking thought it was 
an easy step to condemnation of his father for his 
fatherhood, which, with his near-enmity toward 
his mother for her "criminal ignorance' ' in rear- 
ing him, introduced a sordidly demoralizing ele- 
ment into his mind which forever viciously 
tinctured memories and relations which should 
have been his sacred helpers. The normal mind 
can select well its world — miserably his mind lived 
with these dregs of his own choice. The power 



110 OUK NERVOUS FRIENDS 

of normal selection will, in the best mind, be 
gradually lost through habitual surrender to the 
morbid. 

For the next year he lived unhappily in a home 
which he made unhappy. Naturally thoughtful, 
he daily took long walks, brooding over his 
wrongs — walks which brought him little benefit 
physically, as he considered himself unable to put 
into them sufficient effort to wring perspiration 
from his brow or toxins from his muscles. False 
interpretation of his own symptoms increased 
with the abnormal closeness of his scrutiny of 
them. His superficial knowledge he accepted as 
final. Ignorant of the limitations of heredity, will 
and judgment became subservient to pessimism, 
and the days marked a gradual, deepening depres- 
sion. The skein was asnarl. 

A relative physician responded to the mother's 
call of distress and spent a week in the home, then 
took Harold under his personal care to a series 
of specialists — but not stomach specialists. 
Serious treatment was carried out at home with 
a young physician as companion. Two institu- 
tions offered the best help of their elaborate equip- 
ments and perfected methods. Three years of 
badly discounted usefulness passed. Long since 
had any call of responsibility ceased to elicit 
response. Toward the end of this time he seemed 
better, and was spending the summer at a health- 
resort, living a relatively normal life. Fate then 
seemed to smile — dainty fingers appeared from 
the nowhere, which promised gently, patiently, 
surely to loosen each tangled snarl. 



THE TANGLED SKEIN 111 

Eva Worth was another only child of affluence. 
She, too, was recuperating, spending the summer 
at the same resort as Harold. "Overwork at col- 
lege, " it was said. Petite of person, pleasing in 
manner, sweetly spoiled, with sympathies quickly 
born but usually displaced by fresher interests, she 
was bright and responsive in mind, and her at- 
traction to Harold Weston gave promise of being 
the touch needed to complete his restoration. 
Providence only knows the possibilities latent 
in a union of these poor children of wealth. 
For him there was an unquestioned awaken- 
ing. The somber clouds of his moods seemed 
destined to be transformed into delicate pastels 
by the promises of love. It was more than 
an infatuation for them both, and an under- 
standing which was virtually an engagement 
left them happy even in their parting. But happi- 
ness was not a word for Harold Weston 's conjur- 
ing. Throughout the weeks of his association 
with this fair girl, the first woman for whom he 
had ever cared, the thought had repeatedly come 
that he owed her a full and explicit explanation 
of his illness and of his "defective heredity.' ' 
At home where the brooding habit had grown 
strong and fixed, this idea became so insistent, 
within two weeks, that he relieved the tension of 
its demands by a long letter of details, which even 
to the sympathetic ear of love were more than 
disquieting. The letter ended with a question of 
her willingness to indicate a final decision in her 
response. The appeal of his fine eyes was not 
there to help — other eyes were nearer. Eva 



112 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

Worth was but twenty-two. Home training, the 
reading of much fine literature, a college educa- 
tion, her own poor little heart, all failed to be- 
speak for her wisdom in this crisis. An impul- 
sive, almost resentful refusal was sent. Second 
thoughts held more wisdom, for woman's pity 
was now wisdom, so another day saw another 
letter, one with a few saving words of hope. The 
first reply was handed to Harold after luncheon. 
Quietly he left the house, apparently for one of 
his afternoon walks. By morning he had not re- 
turned and a general alarm went out. Some days 
later two boys, fishing in the river from an old 
log, saw a cap in an eddy. No more has been seen 
or heard of Harold Weston. A hasty hand, a 
hasty touch had broken the thread. 

Two women were left to suffer. The elder, 
haunted by the reechoings of an only son's con- 
demnation, lives out her years in a loneliness 
which will not break, harrowed by questions of 
the wisdom of her mother-love, the best she had 
to give. Some mother's son she may yet help 
save, for she knows the vital error which shielded 
and guarded her boy till he reached his majority, 
never having met trial, hopelessly untrained in 
coping with adversity. The younger, sobered by 
the voice of self -accusation, ever feels the weight 
of the consciousness of a grave duty slighted; she 
was made more wise in a day of deep reality than 
by twenty years of conventional training. Tested 
again she would give as she has never known giv- 
ing, give that she might protect. 



CHAPTER XII 
THE TROUBLED SEA 

A young woman, of rather striking appearance 
attired in her street clothing, is standing beside her 
dresser. She has just returned from town. She 
is of medium height, trim of figure, weighing 
about one hundred and forty, with skin of a soft 
ivory tint and cheeks showing a faint flush of 
health — or of excitement. Her dark hair waves 
gracefully and the scattering strands of gray quite 
belie her youth. The eyes are well placed, nearly 
black, and can sparkle on occasion. Her rather 
poorly formed hands of many restless habits, are 
the only apparent defect in this> externally at- 
tractive, young woman. She has just broken the 
seal of a heavy vellum envelope addressed in a 
strange feminine hand. It is an engraved an- 
nouncement which reads: 

"Mrs. Pinkney Rogers announces the marriage of her 
daughter, Pearl May, to Mr. Lee Burnham" — 

She never read the rest. She never saw the 
— "on Tuesday, May thirtieth nineteen hundred 
and one. At Home, Eome, Georgia, after July 
fifth." Her sister, Addie, coming up the stairs, 
thought she heard a moan and hurried in to find 
Stella lying in a crumpled heap. Addie's quick 

113 



114 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

eye noticed the announcement. She read it all, 
and destroyed it, and through the years it was 
never mentioned by either of them. She, alone, 
knew its relation to her sister's collapse, but with 
proverbial southern pride never voiced her 
opinion of the tragic cause of her older sister's 
years of nervous ill-health. 

Mr. Beckman, Stella's father, was at this time 
about fifty -five. He was the brunette parent from 
whom many of her more attractive physical 
qualities had been inherited. He was proprietor 
of the best men's furnishing store of the county's 
metropolis. His business was moderately suc- 
cessful, built up, he felt, entirely through years 
of his personal thought and attention, and it was 
practically his only interest. Even his interest- 
ing family was a matter of course — though the 
amount of the day's sales never became so. Mr. 
Beckman had a single diversion. The store closed 
at ten o'clock Saturday nights; between twelve 
and one its proprietor would reach home in an 
exalted state, and for two hours poor Mrs. Beck- 
man would hear his plans for developing the big- 
gest gent's clothing-business in the state, for be- 
coming a merchant-prince, emphasized with many 
a hearty slap on her back. This weekly relaxa- 
tion was always followed by a miserable Sunday 
morning, invariably referred to by every member 
of the family as "another of Papa's sick head- 
aches. ' ' Mrs. Beckman never lisped the details of 
those unhappy Saturday nights, and the loyal de- 
ception was so well carried out, with such devoted 
attention and nursing, that by early afternoon, 



THE TROUBLED SEA 115 

Sunday, the invalid was quite restored and any 
possible self-reproach had been melted away. 
Headaches of the real kind did come later, and, 
as his habits changed not, the Brights which first 
appeared, at fifty-eight progressed without inter- 
ruption to his death at sixty. 

Mrs. Beckman was a blonde, but for many years 
had been a badly faded one. She was as single- 
minded in regard to her household as her hus- 
band to his store. Neither had developed more 
than family and local interests. She was the 
same age as her husband and had, without ques- 
tion, worked faithfully, long hours, through the 
long years, in homage to her sense of housekeep- 
ing duties. The coming of the children, only, 
from time to time, kept her away from kitchen 
and parlor for a few weeks. She had been to 
Atlanta but once during the last ten years, not 
that Mr. Beckman willed it so — she could have had 
vacations and attractive dresses, though for some 
reason, possibly the "fading" which has been 
mentioned, he never urged her to go with him — 
and she needed urging, for she honestly believed 
there was "too much to do" at home. The habit 
of industry can become as inveterate as habits of 
pleasure. 

The two Beckman boys had the virtues of both 
father and mother. They finished at the city 
high school, and at once went to work in the store 
with such earnestness of purpose that they were 
quite prepared to conduct the business, even better 
than the father had done, when he became in- 
capacitated. 



116 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

We met the sister, Addie, in Stella's room and 
realized from her* discretion, manifested under 
stress, that she possessed elements of character. 
'She was a clear-skinned, high-strung blonde — 
thin-skinned too, probably, for from childhood her 
hands rebelled at household duties. The family 
thrift was hers, however, and from the limited 
opportunities of the home town, she prepared her- 
self for, and filled well, for years, a position with 
a successful law firm. She later married the 
senior member — a widower. His children and her 
high-strung thin-skinnedness and lack of domestic 
propensities have not made her as successful a 
home-builder as she was a stenographer. 

Stella Beckman's early life was deeply in- 
fluenced by many of the surroundings which we 
have glimpsed. Hers was not a home of fine 
ideals. Much that was common was always 
present. The table-talk was almost competitive 
in nature, as, with the possible exception of the 
mother, each one used "I" almost insistently, as 
a text for converse, the three times a day they 
sat together. Even mutual interests were largely 
obscured, much of the time, by personal ones? 
barring only the subject of sickness. All forms 
of illness were themes commanding instant and 
absorbing attention. Inordinate anxiety was felt 
by all for the ills of the one; and for days the 
"I" would be forgotten if any member of the 
home-circle was ' ' sick. ' ' And the concerns of the 
patient, whether suffering from a cold, sore eyes, 
a sprained ankle, or "had her tonsils out," were 
discussed with minuteness of detail worthy an In- 



THE TROUBLED SEA 117 

ternational Conference. How the patient slept, 
what the doctor said, the effect of the new medi- 
cine, how the heart was standing the strain, what 
the visiting neighbors thought of the case, in fact 
the whole subject of sickness held a morbid in- 
terest for each member of the family. Sickness, 
no matter how slight, was with the Beckmans 
ever an excuse for changing any or all plans. We 
might speak of the discussion of illness as the 
Beckman family avocation. 

Stella was a bright child, who, wisely directed 
and influenced, would have taken a good edu- 
cation. She could have developed into a particu- 
larly ple'asing, capable, useful, possibly forceful 
woman. But the emotional Stella was over-de- 
veloped, until it obstructed the growth of the rea- 
soning Stella. Still we should call her a normal 
small-town child, certainly until her last year in 
grammar-school. She had some difficulty with 
her studies that spring because of her eyes. Her 
lenses, fitted in Atlanta, seemed to make them 
worse. It was only after she went to a noted 
specialist in Charleston that she was relieved. 
It is significant that later these expensively ob- 
tained glasses were discarded as "too much 
trouble. ' ' 

The summer Stella was thirteen, Grandmother 
Beckman came to spend her last days in her son's 
home. The granddaughter had been named for 
her, and Grandmother was frail and old and 
needed attention. Grandmother also had some 
means. For over a year the young girl gave 
much of her time to the old lady, and for over a 



118 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

year she was able to lead the Beckman table-talk 
with her wealth of details about Grandma's sick- 
ness. Stella's care of her charge was excellent, 
entirely lacking in any selfish element. Death 
hesitated, when he finally called, and for nearly a 
week the dying woman lay unconscious. These 
"days of strain" and the death and funeral were, 
always after, mentioned by Stella and her people 
as her "first shock. ' ' For a time she was so nerv- 
ous and restless and her sleep so disturbed that 
the doctor gave her hypnotics and advised her 
being sent away. She went to Atlanta for two 
months, boarding in the home of a Methodist 
minister, who some years before had been sta- 
tioned in Eome. It was Stella's first experience 
in a religious home. She had never been accus- 
tomed to hearing the "blessing" said, and food 
referred to as ' ' God-given ' ' seemed, at first, quite 
too sacred to swallow. And the effect of morn- 
ing worship — the seriously read Bible chapter, the 
earnest prayer, with the entire family kneeling — 
affected her profoundly, and gave to this godly 
home a sanctity which, at susceptible not-yet-fif- 
teen, awakened emotions so powerful that for 
days she walked as one in a dream, one attracted 
by some wonderful vision which was drawing her, 
unresisting, into its very self. Each day was a 
step closer, and at prayer-meeting the Wednes- 
day night before she returned home, she an- 
nounced her conversion, with an intensity of 
earnestness which could but impress every hearer. 
Stella Beckman went back to Eome filled with 
a zeal for the new religious life which commanded 



THE TROUBLED SEA 119 

the respect of even her religiously careless father. 
Nor was it a flash in the pan. She joined the 
church. She made her sister join the church, and 
to the church she gave four years of remarkable 
devotion. Church interests were first, and one 
Sunday the pastor publicly announced that for the 
twelve months past Stella Beckman had not 
missed a single service in any branch of the 
church's activities. She taught a Sunday-school 
class. She sang in the choir. She was president 
of the Epworth League, and not only attended, 
but always "testified" at mid-week prayer-meet- 
ing. Her church interests took all her time. The 
foreign-missionary cause later laid a gripping 
hold upon her, and arrangements were made, four 
years after she went into the church, for her to 
go to a Missionary Training-School. 

Somehow things went wrong here. She had ex- 
pected an almost sanctified atmosphere. She was 
accustomed to being regarded as essentially de- 
vout, but there was a sense of order in the school 
which she felt was mechanical, class-room work 
seemed to be counted as important as religious 
services, and her fervidly expressed religious ex- 
periences appeared to reflect chill rather than the 
accustomed warmth of the home prayer-meetings. 
Moreover, real lessons were assigned which no 
amount of religious feeling or no intensity of per- 
sonal praying made easy. She hadn't studied for 
years ; in fact, she had never learned to do intel- 
lectual work studiously. And even these good re- 
ligious teachers did not hesitate to demand ac- 
curate recitations. She had been accustomed for 



120 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

years to have preference shown, and here she 
was treated only as one of many, and, humiliat- 
ingly, as one who was failing to maintain the 
standards of the many. She fell behind in the 
two most important studies, nor was her class- 
work in general good. Whether she would have 
later proven capable of getting down to rock- 
bottom and meeting the demands of reason on a 
rational basis, we cannot say, for the family 
hobby abruptly terminated her missionary career. 
"Mother dangerously sick with inflammatory 
rheumatism. Come at once," the telegram said 
— and she hastily returned home to be met with, 
what her history records as, "my second shock.' ' 
Her mother was sick, and truly and genuinely 
suffering. The house was in disorder. Weeks 
followed in which Stella's best strength was 
needed. Her mother slowly mended, but never 
regained her old activity. The doctor said a 
heart-valve was damaged, and the family there- 
after were never quite certain when the sudden 
end would come — an uncertainty which was proven 
legitimate ten years later, when she died, almost 
suddenly. Stella had met shock number two very 
well. The home-love and welcome and the 
warmth of feeling she experienced in the home- 
church were a never-admitted relief from the 
rigid exactions of the training-school life, and did 
much to neutralize, for the time, her anxiety about 
her mother and the i i strain of her care. ' ' It was 
a family which ever advertised home-devotion, 
and so this call of home illness completely obscured 
all other plans for three years. But home 



THE TROUBLED SEA 121 

responsibilities quite wrecked her church-going 
record. In fact, it was unkindly whispered that 
Stella was ' ; backsliding. ' ' And these same 
whispers found audible expression the summer 
she was twenty-two, when attractive Lee Burn- 
ham, the judge's son, spent his summer vaca- 
tion at home, and "took her buggy-riding every 
Sunday evening for over two months." 

Lee was only twenty-one, but his was a very 
romantic twenty-one, and he filled Stella's ears 
with so many sweet nothings that she no longer 
heeded the call of duty. And why shouldn't she 
be in love and have a lover! Had she not already 
given the best years of her youth to others ? Had 
she not waited without a thought of rebellion for 
the coming of the right one? And Love, and 
Love's mysterious touch, wrought fantastic 
changes in Stella Beckman's affairs. She and Lee 
read poetry. She had never known how beauti- 
ful poetry was nor how much of it there was to 
read. He knew the good novels and sent her all 
that he himself read, and these were plenty! 
Then, when he was away, he wrote and she wrote, 
and now and then he wrote some verses to her. 
There was no real engagement. They never 
spoke much of the future; the present was too 
full. Home duties and church interests flagged 
badly during these two years, and the summer 
she was twenty-four, it became town talk that this 
young couple would marry. The Beckmans were 
very willing. But one day the judge called Lee 
into his office and wanted to know what these 
"doings" all meant, asking him if he was "going 



122 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

to marry his mother, ' ' and making some rather un- 
complimentary Beckman-Burnham comparisons. 
Lee rather sheepishly told his father there was 
nothing to worry about. He had much respect, 
possibly awe, for the old gentleman. The next 
week Lee left for his final year in law-school. 
His letters to Stella continued, though he plead 
his studies as an excuse for their diminished 
frequency. He did not come home that spring, 
at Easter. "Work," he wrote Stella. Nor was 
he ever square to this poor girl, for he never men- 
tioned his relations with Miss Pearl May Eogers. 
And "shock number three" came, as unhappy 
Stella read the announcement of his marriage, ad- 
dressed in the hand of his June city-bride. A 
lastingly damaging shock it proved to be. 

Stella was put to bed; for days she lay in deep 
apathy. Feeding became a problem of nurses 
and doctors. She cared for nothing — nothing 
"agreed" with her, and she lost weight rapidly. 
Chills and flushes, sweatings and shakings came in 
regular disorder, and for hours she would be ap- 
parently speechless. Somebody — not the doctors 
— reported that Stella Beckman had typho-ma- 
laria. Abnormal sensitiveness to surroundings, to 
sounds, sights and smells, especially a dread of 
unpleasant news, were to complicate her living 
for years to come. For the remainder of her life 
she was to confound sensations normal to emo- 
tional reactions with sensations accompanying 
physical diseases; and sensations came and went 
in her now tense emotional nature like troop- 
ing clouds on a stormy day. Stella's illness 



THE TROUBLED SEA 123 

was so prostrating that her weakened mother 
and busy sister could not care for her adequately, 
and an aunt came to help. Eecovery was slow 
and imperfect; she remained a semi-invalid 
for two and a half years. Physical discom- 
forts were so constant that a surgeon was finally 
consulted who did an exploratory operation and 
removed some unnecessary anatomy. This man's 
personality was strong, his desire to help, genuine, 
and he had considerable insight into the emotional 
illness of his patient. The influence of the opera- 
tion, with the surgeon's encouragement and the 
atmosphere of confidence pervading the excellent, 
small surgical hospital, combined to make Stella 
very much better for the time. But within less 
than three years, her father died. She calls this 
"the fourth shock,' ' and it resulted in another 
period of nervous illness. She cried much at the 
time. Work was impossible — as was all exercise 
— because of her rapid fatigue. One day she 
slipped on the front steps and, apparently, but 
bruised her knee. Her doctor nor the X-ray 
could discover more serious damage. Still, walk- 
ing was practically discontinued, as she could not 
step without pain. At last, almost in desperation, 
her brother took her to a hospital noted for its 
success in reconstructing nervous invalids. At 
this time she weighed but one hundred and four, 
and the list of her symptoms seemed unending. 
A desire to be helped, however, was discerned and 
with rest-treatment she gained rapidly in weight, 
appetite returned, digestive disturbances disap- 
peared, and massage, or a new idea, fully restored 



124 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

her walking powers. She became eager for the 
more important half of her treatment — the out-of- 
door work-cure. During these weeks she had cer- 
tainly been given much physical and mental help. 
Expert and specialized counsel and nursing had 
been hers. 

At the end of five months Stella returned to 
Georgia — restored — a health enthusiast. It now 
became her joy, in and out of season, whenever she 
could secure hearers, to relate the details of her 
illness and the miracle of her restoration. The 
methods of the special hospital that wrought such 
wonders for her were reiterated in detail, and for 
years she made herself thoroughly wearisome by 
her talk of diet and exercise, special bathing, out- 
of-door work and prescribed habits. She kept 
herself constantly conspicuous in her efforts to re- 
form others to her new ways of living. For over 
four years, she sedulously adhered to the routine 
outlined by the hospital, with such devotion to, 
and augmentation of, details that she had little 
time for church and practically no time for house- 
hold affairs. As had been her habit in past ex- 
periences her enthusiasm was causing her to over- 
do, and the business of keeping well seemed now 
her only object in life. This could not go on 
interminably. Something had to happen, and her 
mother's rather sudden death proved the shock 
which was to relieve her from the overenthusiastic 
slavery to an impracticable routine. 

Stella Beckman at forty-five is sadly less fine 
and worthy than the Stella Beckman of eighteen. 
Eeligion, Love and Science have each entered her 



THE TROUBLED SEA 125 

life deeply to enrich it, but all of these built 
upon the sands, the shifting sands of an emotional 
nature which had never laid the granite founda- 
tion of reason. Since the mother's death, the 
logic of her feelings has become more and more 
crippled by false valuations. She lives at home 
keeping house for the boys, recounting each meal- 
time the endless list of her feelings; bringing 
herself, her sickness, her hospital experiences 
wearisomely into the conversation with each 
caller. The emotional stability and the will to 
persevere even at considerable cost, which marked 
youth, are gone. At forty-five her life is object- 
lessly spasmodic, the old family-habit of talking 
of self and the family-fetish of discussing sick- 
ness have honeycombed her character and made 
her hopelessly tiresome. And her feeling-life is 
as restless as a troubled sea. 



CHAPTER XIII 
WILLING ILLNESS 

Mr. Harrison Orr lived till he was twenty-five 
in Indianapolis, the town of his birth, except- 
ing the years spent in Chicago pursuing his liter- 
ary and law courses. He inherited a small for- 
tune and, after two years spent in "seeing the 
world,' ' located in Memphis, Tennessee. Here, 
as an attorney and later as an investor, he was 
professionally, financially and socially successful. 
His father had -been liberal in the use of 
wines and cordials, and young Orr himself always 
remained a "good fellow/ ' just the kind of a man 
to attract a vivacious, socially proud daughter of 
the South. He was thirty-five when he married 
— accounted an age of discretion. His experience 
with womankind was so ample that he should have 
made no mistake in his final, irrevocable choice, 
and, be it said to his honor, no one, not even the 
wife herself, ever knew by word or act of his, to 
the contrary. He and his Mississippi bride spent 
thirty years in apparent domestic tranquillity, 
until he died at sixty-five from a heart which re- 
fused longer to have its claims for purposeful 
living eternally answered by gin rickeys and nips 
of "straight Scotch." 

Mrs. Harrison Orr is unconsciously the un- 

126 



WILLING ILLNESS 127 

happy "villain" of our tale. Her girlhood home 
was on a large sugar-plantation where she, as an 
only child, was reared to dominate her surround- 
ings, while her parents made particular effort 
that she might shine socially. Parts of many 
years she lived in Washington in the home of a 
political relative, and attended a select girls' 
school. After her debut she spent the social 
winters at the Capitol where social niceties were 
developed with much attention to detail, and at 
home and while in Washington she was gratify- 
ingly popular. "A brilliant conversationalist," 
she had heard herself called when fifteen, and the 
art of conversation, hitherto far from neglected, 
became by choice and practice her forte. Bril- 
liancy in speech ever remained her only seriously 
attempted accomplishment. Clever of speech, 
from childhood, she had early learned to utilize 
this ability to attain any desired end. And talk 
she could, and talk she did, and as she grew older, 
by sheer talking she domineered every situation. 
It was her opinion when she married that at any 
time, with any listener, she could talk cleverly 
on any subject. As the years passed, during 
which she added little to her asset of knowledge, 
this art of fine speech gradually, but relentlessly, 
degenerated, and step by step she slipped 
down the paths of delicacy and fineness, through 
the selfishness of her insistent talkativeness. 
Harrison Orr never intimated that his evenings 
at home were hours of boredom, but in later years 
spent much time in the comparative quiet of his 
club. Few intellects can be so amply stored as to 



128 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

continue brilliant through decades of much speak- 
ing, and the sparkle of Mrs. Orr's conversation 
was gradually shrouded in the weariness* of what 
a blunt neighbor termed her "inveterate gabble." 
As it must be, this woman of exceptional oppor- 
tunities early lost true sensitiveness, and, both as 
guest and hostess, ignored the offense of inconsid- 
erate and self-seeking interruptions. She broke 
into the speech of others with crude abandon. 
The itch to lead and preempt the conversation be- 
came uncontrollable. Finer natures thrown with 
her could but tolerate her " naive' ' discourtesy, 
while dependents had to dumbly endure. Mrs. 
Orr but stands as a type illustrating far too many 
mortally wearisome, social pretenders, prominent 
only through the tireless tiresomeness of their 
much speaking. 

The wreckage which may follow a single un- 
thought crudity, in a home otherwise exceptional, 
is signally illustrated in the life of Mrs. Orr's only 
child, Hortense, born two years after their mar- 
riage. From the first she was sensitive and high- 
strung, nervously damaged probably in her early 
years by her mother's restless, unwise overcare. 
When Hortense was five she was sharply ill for 
several weeks with scarlatina. During these days 
she was isolated with Mrs. Place, her nurse, in a 
wing of the home. As fortune would have it, Mrs. 
Place was the daughter of a rural English clergy- 
man. After the death of her husband, who left 
her limited in means, she came to America, where 
she trained. Her wholesome influence over Hor- 
tense, her general demeanor in the home, and her 



WILLING ILLNESS 129 

many excellent qualifications as nurse and woman 
attracted Mr. Orr's discerning attention, and he 
induced her to remain as governess to his 
daughter. Mrs. Place proved a most excellent ad- 
dition to the Orr household. Always deferential, 
she was never servile; always reserved, she ever 
faced duties large and small, promptly, quietly 
and efficiently. Never, through her nearly ten 
years as daily companion of Hortense, did her 
speech or conduct betoken aught but refinement. 
More and more Hortense retreated to her whole- 
some companionship in face of the assaults of her 
mother's trying volubility. In many ways this 
most unusual nurse protected her charge from the 
greater damage of poor mothering than actually 
occurred. The differences between these two 
women were reflected in the sensitive child's life. 
Unconsciously at first, later in certain details, ulti- 
mately without reserve, she approved the stand- 
ards of the one and repudiated those of the other. 
In contrast to her mother she grew into an ab- 
normal reserve. 

Hortense never attended the public schools but 
was regularly taught by Mrs. Place until she was 
fifteen, when she went East and entered her 
mother's old school, in Washington. The years of 
her careful tutoring had failed to accustom her to 
competition of any kind, and this first year of 
school work was taxing and but indifferently suc- 
cessful. During the spring term she had measles 
which left her with a hacking cough, and she did 
not regain her lost weight. The school-doctor sent 
her home, "for the southern climate,' ' where she 



130 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

remained for a year, rather frail and the object 
of much detailed, maternal solicitude. It was 
probably this same solicitude which finally be- 
came so wearying that she returned to school for 
relief. Hortense was now a year behind, but re- 
sented the rather superior airs of some of her old 
classmates so effectively that she got down to 
business, made up her back work, and graduated 
reasonably well up in her entrance class. Of light 
build, and always frail in appearance, she did com- 
mendable work in school athletics. She took 
private instruction in hockey, for she was deter- 
mined "to make the team," and her success in 
accomplishing this is significant of her ability to 
do, when she willed. At one of the later inter- 
•scholastic games she met a handsome, manly, 
George Washington University student. She was 
nineteen, he twenty-three, and on his commence- 
ment day he honored her by offering his hand. 
Her southern love was aglow. Her lover was 
practically making his own way, but his prospects 
were excellent, his character superior, and they 
both cared very much. 

Unhappily, Mrs. Place had returned to England, 
or Hortense would have confided in her and some 
futures might have been different. But the 
warmth of the new love seemed at the time to dis- 
sipate the chilliness toward her mother, which, un- 
expressed to herself, had through the years been 
increasing in the daughter 's heart. So she wrote 
a long letter full of the beautiful story of the 
growing happiness, with pages of fervid descrip- 
tions of a certain fine young fellow, and imp or- 



WILLING ILLNESS 131 

tuned her mother to come East at once and to 
bring her blessing. No snch filial warmth had 
Mrs. Orr ever before known. No snch oppor- 
tunity for a beneficent expression of the high 
privilege of motherhood had ever been entrusted 
to her. She responded without hesitation. She 
did not even wait to read their daughter's letter 
to her husband. When she reached Washington 
she summoned the young suitor to her hotel, and 
succeeded in one masterful quarter of an hour in 
arousing his violent dislike and lasting contempt. 
Through diplomacy she got Hortense on the 
Memphis-bound train. She was determined that 
her "darling child" should never marry beneath 
her station, and she talked and talked, drowning 
her daughter's protests, appeals and objections, 
in her merciless flow of words. Night after night 
she would stay with her till after twelve, leaving 
the poor girl tense, distracted and sleepless. And 
the habit of sleeplessness developed and with it 
a painfully abnormal sensitiveness to noises. The 
cruelly disappointed girl rapidly went to pieces. 
She craved a woman's sympathy, she longed for 
a mother's comprehending love, but she soon 
came to dread even her mother's presence, and 
formed the habit of burying her ears in the pil- 
lows to shut out the sound of that voice which 
could have meant the sweetest music of all, yet 
which to her distraught nerves had become an irri- 
tating, repelling, hated noise. Then special 
nurses came; the hot months were spent in the 
Eockies; several sea-trips were made; twice 
patient and nurse went East to forget it all in 



132 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

weeks of concerts and theaters in New York. 
But her inability to sleep was but temporarily re- 
lieved, while her antagonism to noises increased. 
She was then in Philadelphia for six months 
under the care of a noted neurologist, where she 
slowly gained considerably, physically, and was 
sufficiently well to spend a short, social "coming 
out season" with her parents. Yet the "at 
homes ' ' and tea-parties and functions in which her 
mother reveled, never more than superficially in- 
terested her. 

Bather strangely, father and daughter had not 
been as close as their similar natures and needs 
would suggest. While Mrs. Orr may not have 
been jealous, she preempted her husband's home 
hours mercilessly; but in her father's death Hor- 
tense came to know that one of the few props of 
her stability had been removed. Moreover, her 
mother's incessant reiteration of her loneliness 
and sorrow, and the endless discussion of the de- 
tails of her depressing widow's weeds, and of her 
taxing, exhausting widow's responsibilities, 
brought on a return of the old symptoms, with 
the antipathy to noises even intensified. We 
may think of Hortense Orr as inherently weak. 
This is not so. Save as influenced in her girlhood 
by Mrs. Place, and while stimulated during her 
last three years at school by personal ambition, 
she had known no duties nor responsibilities. 
There had never been any necessity for specific 
effort or sacrifice. After her great disappoint- 
ment she had surrendered to depression of spirit, 
and she reacted in the same way after her father 's 



WILLING ILLNESS 133 

death. And this surrender was early followed by 
weakness of her disused body. She also sur- 
rendered to the weakness of self-pity, that craven 
mocker of self-respect. She was not a will-less 
girl, but life had brought her small chance to de- 
velop that will which masters, while wilfulness, 
that will which demands selfishly for self, grew 
out of the soil so largely of her mother's prepar- 
ing. This wilfulness, first asserted in small 
things, grew and grew. 

The family doctor saw more than tongue and 
liver and thin blood and bodily weakness. He 
realized the helplessness of Hortense in finding 
her stronger self in the home atmosphere, and 
advised a year in Europe — to get away from her 
sorrow, he said, to get away from her mother's 
wearying discussion of details, he knew. For 
nearly a year she was treated in Germany at dif- 
ferent cures without benefit. It was always the 
" noise' ' that kept her from sleeping. It was the 
" noise" which she had learned to hate and to 
revile. To get away from noise became her fixed 
determination. And to this end a small mountain- 
cottage was secured, secluded from the haunts and 
industries of man, in the remoteness of the 
Tyrolean Alps. Here with her nurse and a serv- 
ant she remained three years. For the first 
months she seemed happier, and took some interest 
in the inspiring views and rich flora of her sur- 
roundings. But the night did not bring the silence 
she willed. She sensed the heavy breathing of 
her nurse, the movements of the servant as she 
turned in her bed, and sometimes even snored, 



134 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

she knew it ! She would spend hours of strained, 
sleepless attention, alert to detect another instance 
of the heartless repetition of this incriminating 
sound. She must be alone. She feared nothing 
so much as the hated sounds of human activity. 
So a one-room shack was built a hundred yards 
away from her companions, in the deeper soli- 
tude of the forest. Here she slept alone, month 
after month. But the winters, even in the 
Tyrolean foot-hills, are severe at times, and the 
deadly monotony of this useless life, and the im- 
provement which she "knew" would come with 
the perfection of her sleeping arrangements, com- 
bined to decide her to return home, though still an, 
enemy to the unbearable sounds of the night. 
Twenty-eight years she had lived with no true 
interest in life; neither home, attractions in New 
York or in Europe, nor treatment offered by com- 
petent and kind specialists had influenced her one 
thought away from her willingness to be ill. The 
nurse, who had buried herself so long with this 
poor girl in Europe, was quite appalled at Mrs. 
Orr's inconsideration of her daughter's "sensi- 
tive, nervous state. ' ' Nurse and mother soon had 
words; nurse and daughter left promptly for the 
East, where two hours from New York they spent 
another year in semi-isolation together. 

A New York broker owned the place adjoining 
the invalid's cottage. Walter Douglas, then but 
twenty-six, was his private secretary. Walter 
and Hortense met in the quiet, woodland paths. 
It is difficult to know just what the mutual attrac- 
tions were. She had received many advantages 



WILLING ILLNESS 135 

which had not been his, still life was certainly a 
lonely thing for her. He was her first real in- 
terest since she had left Washington, and love re- 
awakened and blew into life the embers she 
thought were gray-cold. It was never to be the 
flaming love-fire of ten years before, but it was 
bright enough to decide her to marry, which she 
did without writing any letter of confidence to 
her unsuspecting mother. 

Mr. Orr had left the property in his wife's con- 
trol, and she had been unquestionably most gener- 
ous in supplying her daughter with funds. When 
she received the brief note telling of the little wed- 
ding and inviting her to meet them in Washing- 
ton, on their simple wedding-trip, she found her- 
self for the first time in her life — speechless! 
There were no words to express this "outrage." 
The disability was short-lived, but her letter to the 
bridal couple was shorter. They had taken things 
into their own hands; they had ignored her who 
had every right to be at least advised, and they 
could take care of themselves. Hardly had this 
letter been mailed when she consulted her attorney 
as to ways and means to annul this " crazy mar- 
riage. ' ' 

The young couple had more pride than dollars, 
and bravely started house-keeping in a small flat. 
Few had been more inadequately trained for 
household duties than this self-pampered woman 
who pluckily at first, then grimly, went to the 
limit of her poorly developed strength in an ef- 
fort to make homelike their few, plain rooms, and 
to prepare their unattractive meals. Still it all 



136 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

might have worked out had the noises of the street 
not attained an ascendancy. In less than four 
months the yonthfnl husband, through a sense of 
duty, wrote the mother details of his- bride's 
"precarious condition." Mrs. Orr promptly sent 
money, and the mother in her soon brought her 
to them in person. Within a few days she recog- 
nized the helpless husband's honesty and patience, 
and took them both to Memphis, providing a fur- 
nished flat and a good servant. The incompetent 
wife's short experience in household responsi- 
bilities, for which she was so utterly unprepared, 
made sickness a most welcome haven of refuge, 
and for months she did nothing but war with the 
noises of the quiet suburb. Then their baby came, 
but with it slight evidence of young mother love. 
She seemed almost indifferent to her little one. 
At rare times, only, would she respond to her 
first-born and to her husband. The doctor said 
there was no reason why she did not regain 
strength, that she could if she would, that it was 
not a question of physical frailty but it was de- 
cidedly a case of willing to have the easiest way. 
"Something has to be done," he said at last, and 
he strongly advised that she be sent to a hospital 
where she would be the object of benevolent 
despotism. She constantly complained of her 
oversensitive hearing, and had certainly developed 
all the arts of the invalid. She made no objec- 
tion to the proposed plan. She did not know what 
was in store for her, outside of the mentioned 
"rest-cure." Full authority was given the insti- 
tution officials to use any possible helpful means to 



WILLING ILLNESS 137 

stimulate her recovery. In all this the family 
physician counseled wisely and with discernment. 
At the hospital Hortense Douglas was told that 
she was to remain until she was well, that it was 
not a question of duration of treatment, but of her 
condition, which would determine the date of her 
return to her home, husband, and little one. The 
relationship between her years of illness and her 
unhappy disappointment, between her antagonism 
to night sounds and her intolerant impatience with 
her mother, was carefully explained. The ideal 
of making friends with these same noises which 
were but the voices of human progress, happiness, 
industry and personal rights, was held before her. 
Following the first clash of her will with the hospi- 
tal authorities, she claimed that she was losing 
her mind, and was told that she would be care- 
fully watched and would be treated at once as ir- 
responsible when she proved to be so. Step by 
step she was forced to health, she was compelled 
to live rationally. Scientific feeding produced 
rapid improvement in her nutrition, she gained 
strength by the use of foods which she had never 
liked, had never taken and could "not take." In 
every way she improved in spite of herself. She 
often said she could not stand the treatment. 
But cooperation relentlessly proved more pleasant 
than rebellion. At the end of five months she was 
sleeping night after night the deep sleep honestly 
earned by thorough physical weariness, a sleep 
which nervous tire and worrying apprehension 
can never know. - She could get no satisfaction as 
to when she would be allowed to return home. 



138 OUE NEEVOUS FRIENDS 

She had no money in her possession, but she 
slipped away one morning, pawned her watch for 
railway-fare, and arrived home announcing that 
she was well. 

Wealth, medical experts, years in Europe, 
society, the pleasures of seasons in New York, a 
husband's love, motherhood had failed to find 
health for this wilful woman. Not until her ill- 
ness was made more uncomfortable than the 
legitimate duties of health, not until she recog- 
nized it was normal living at home or life in that 
" awful hospital," did she will to be well — and 
well she was. 



CHAPTEE XIV 
UNTANGLING THE SNARL 

You have probably passed the mansion. It 
stands, prominent, on the avenue leading from 
Buffalo to Niagara Falls. Three generations 
have added to its beauty and appointments. A 
generation ago it stood, imposing, and if fault 
could be found, it was its self-consciousness of 
architectural excellence. Every continent had con- 
tributed to its furnishings, and some of its serv- 
ants, too, were trained importations. In the mid- 
dle eighties, this noble pile was the home of an 
invalid, a twelve-year-old boy, a housekeeping 
aunt, and nurses, valets, maids, butlers, cooks, and 
coachmen. The invalid master of the house was 
forty-eight. As he leaned on the mantel looking 
out across the lawn, you felt the presence of a 
massive, powerful physique, but as he slowly 
turned to greet you, you fairly caught your 
breath from the intensity of the shock. The 
cheeks were hollow; the lips were ever parted to 
make more easy the simple act of breathing, the 
pallor of the face was more than that of mere 
weakness — there was a yellowish hue of both skin 
and eye-whites. The shrunken claw-like hands 
that offered greeting, the shrunken thighs, the in- 
creased girth of body which had so deceived your 

139 



140 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

first glance, all bespoke mortal illness to even the 
untrained eye — advanced cirrhosis of the liver, to 
the professional scrutiny. And he was to be the 
fourth, in a line of financially successful Kents, 
to die untimely from mere eating and drinking. 
You would not have stayed long with this sick 
man. Only a large love or a large salary could 
have made the atmosphere of his presence endur- 
able, for he was the essence of impatience, the 
quintessence of wilfulness. The sumptuousness 
of his surroundings, the punctilious devotion of 
his servants, the deferential respect shown him in 
high financial circles, books, people, memories, all 
failed ever to soften that drawn, hard face, for 
he was a miserably wretched, unhappy sufferer. 
Now and then his eyes would light up when 
Francis, his son and heir, was brought in. But 
Francis had a governess and an aunt who were 
respectively paid and commanded to keep him 
entertained and contented, and to see that he did 
not long disturb the invalid. That last year was 
one of most disorderly invalidism — not disorder 
of a boisterous, riotous kind, but an unmitigated 
rebellion to doctors' orders and advice, to the 
suggestions of friends, to the urgings and plead- 
ings of nurses and "Aunt Emma," There were 
no voluble explosions; the impatience was not of 
the noisy kind — he had too much character for 
that, but the stream of thought was turgid and 
sulphurous. Jan, the valet, never argued, urged, 
suggested — by no little foreign shrug of his 
shoulders did he even hint that the master 's way 
was not entirely right — and politic, faithful Jan 



UNTANGLING THE SNARL 141 

stood next to Francis in his good graces ; in fact, 
he was more acceptable as a companion. The 
only reason the sick man gave for his indiffer- 
ence to professional advice was that he was the 
third generation to go this way — and this way he 
went. A giant he was in the forest of men, felled 
in his prime. 

Francis did not know his mother. She had been 
beautiful, a gentle, lovable daughter of genera- 
tions of social refinement. Her father and grand- 
father had lived ' ' pretty high. ' ' In truth, had the 
doctors dared, " alcoholic, ' ' as an adjective, 
would have appeared in both their death certifi- 
cates; and the worm must have been in the bud, 
for she died suddenly at twenty-five, following 
a short, apparently inadequate illness. Thus, 
three-year-old Francis was left to a busy father's 
care, a maiden aunt's theoretical incompetence, 
and to the ministrations of a series of governesses 
who remained so long as they pleased their youth- 
ful lord. The undisciplined father's idea of good 
times, for both himself and his son, was based upon 
having what you want right now, and why not? 
— with unlimited gold, with its seemingly un- 
limited buying power. Dear Auntie, poor thing! 
knew no force higher than "Now, Francis, I 
wouldn't," or "Please don't," or on very ex- 
treme occasions, "I shall certainly tell your 
father" — as utterly ineffective in introducing one 
slightest gleam of the desirability and potency 
of unselfishness into this boy's mind, as was the 
gracious servility of the servants. 

Francis was large for his age, unusually active 



142 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

and remarkably direct mentally, therefore little 
adjustment was needed as he entered that 
usually leveling community — boy-school-life. He 
was generous and good-hearted to a lovable 
degree and with such qualities and advantages he 
early became, and remained, leader in his crowd. 
After his father died, the boy, not unnaturally, 
placed him — the only one whose will he had ever 
had to respect — high in his reverence. The father 
had been a powerful young man, a boxer to be 
feared, oar one in the Varsity Crew; a man who, 
through the force and brilliancy of his business 
life, had won more than state-wide prominence, 
and had left many influential friends who spoke 
of him in highest respect. It was to be expected 
that the father's strong character would have 
deeply influenced his only son, and like father 
like son, only more so, he grew. But the "more 
so" is our tale. 

"Bare, juicy tenderloin steaks go to muscle. 
You don't need much else, and we didn't get much 
else at the training-table, ' ' the father used to say, 
and they unquestionably formed the bulk of the 
boy's naturally fine physique, for he developed 
in spite of much physical misuse into a two-hun- 
dred-pound six-footer. Francis began smoking at 
twelve. On his tenth birthday a small wine glass 
had been filled for him and thereafter he always 
had wine at dinner, and he liked it — not only the 
effects but the taste. The desire was in his blood- 
Before he was eighteen he was brought home in- 
toxicated and unconscious. No law had ever en- 
tered into his training which suggested any form 






UNTANGLING THE SNARL 143 

of self-control. The principles of self-mastery 
were unthought; they had been untaught. "Eat, 
drink and be merry" might express the sum of his 
ideals. And so, physically or mentally, no 
thought of restraint entered his youthful philoso- 
phy. There was nothing vicious, no strain of 
meanness, much generosity; naturally kindly and 
practically devoid of any spirit of contention, and 
peculiarly free from any touch of the disagree- 
able, he was blessed with a spirit of good fellow- 
ship. He never questioned the rights of his 
friends to do as they pleased, and they quite 
wisely avoided questioning his right to do like- 
wise ; so, desire was untrammeled and grew apace. 
It was in Francis Kent's failure to bridle this 
power that the threads were first snarled. 

The boy's fine body was trained in a haphazard 
way. Had his father lived, it might have been 
different. Mentally, he was naturally industrious 
and next to the joys of the flesh came his studies. 
It was as toastmaster at his "prep-school" com- 
mencement-banquet that he first drank to intoxi- 
cation. The next fall he entered Yale, and there 
is no question but those days this revered uni- 
versity had a "fast set" that was emphatically 
rapid. But Francis Kent could go the paces; in 
fact, none of the football huskies could put in a 
night out and bring as snappy an exterior and as 
clear a wit to first class next morning as young 
Kent. His heredity, his beefsteaks, the gods, 
or something, certainly made it possible for him 
to be a "bang-up rounder" and at the same time 
an acceptable student through four college years. 



144 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

He was almost gifted in a capacity for the romance 
literatures, and, anomalous though it may seem, 
he majored and excelled in philosophy. He was 
truly a popular fellow when he took his degree at 
twenty-two. High living had given him high 
color; his eye was active and his face, though 
somewhat heavy, was mobile with the sympathy 
of intelligence ; his physique was good ; he dressed 
with a negligee art which was picturesque. Big 
of heart, he had a wealth of scholarly ideas, and 
not a few ideals ; many thought he faced life a cer- 
tain winner. 

Practically every door was open to him, and 
he chose — Europe. Those were two hectic years. 
Every gait was traveled; for weeks he would 
go at top-speed, go until nerve and blood could 
brook no more. No conception of the duty of 
self-restraint ever reached him till, at last, the 
nervous system, often slow to anger, began to 
express its objection to the abuse it was suffer- 
ing. He was not rebounding as in the past from 
his excesses. For a day or so following a pro- 
longed drinking bout he would be apprehensive 
and depressed, unable to find an interest to take 
him away from the indefinite dread which haunted 
him. Not till he could again stand a few, stiff 
glasses of brandy could he find his nerve. A 
friend found him thus ' ' shot up ' ' one day and sug- 
gested that he was "going the pace that kills,' 7 
and hinted that another path might be trod with 
wisdom. "What's the use?" Kent flung back, 
"I'm fated to go with an alcoholic liver; it's in 
the family strong — both sides. I saw my father 



UNTANGLING THE SNARL 145 

go out with it. I know Mendel 's theory by heart, 
two black pigeons never parent a white one." 
And on he went. His creed now might well have 
been: "For to-morrow I die." 

It may have been the impulsion of an unrecog- 
nized fear — he said it was philosophic interest — 
which had attracted him to study the various 
theories of heredity. He had been particularly 
impressed by Mendel's "Principles of Inherit- 
ance," and its graphic elucidation of the mathe- 
matical recurrence of the dominant characteristics 
had grasped him as a fetish. With such forebears 
as his, there was no hope. The die had been cast 
before he was born. Why struggle against the 
laws of determinism? He was what he was be- 
cause forces beyond his control had made him so. 
Scientific certainty now seemed to add its weight 
of evidence to his accepted fatalism, when, at 
twenty-eight, instead of the accustomed days of 
depression, a period of particularly heavy drink- 
ing was followed by a serious attack of delirium 
tremens. For several days he was cared for as 
one dangerously insane. After reason had been 
restored, the doctor, in his earnest desire to help, 
warned him that he must live differently and, 
knowing the father's ending, thought to frighten 
him into a change of habits by stating that his 
drinking would kill him in a few years if he kept 
it up. "You are already in the first stages of 
cirrhosis," he told him. As it turned out, no 
warning could have been less wise; it simply as- 
sured Kent the certainty of the fate which pur- 
sued, and soon he was at it again. Before thirty 



146 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

lie had suffered two attacks of alcoholic delirium, 
had been a periodic drinker for fifteen years, 
a regular drinker for five years, often averaging 
for weeks two quarts of whiskey a day, and always 
smoking from forty to fifty cigarettes. Life had 
become more and more unlivable when he was not 
narcotized by alcohol or nicotine, and he was fast 
becoming a pitiful slave to his intoxicated and 
damaged nervous system. 

He was living at home now, nominally secretary 
of a strong corporation — practically eating, smok- 
ing, drinking, theater-going, lounging at the 
Varsity Club, and playing with his speedy motor- 
boat. He enjoyed music and, when in condition, 
occasionally attended concerts. Rarely he went 
to the Episcopal service, then only when special 
music was given. The faithful will discern the 
hand of Providence in his first seeing Martha 
Fullington in one of these rare hours at church. 
She was truly a fine, wholesome woman. The 
daughter of a small town Congregational minister 
of the best New England stock, she had always 
been healthy in body and mind. She possessed an 
unusual contralto voice, and came to Buffalo at 
twenty-two for special training. Helpful letters 
of introduction, with her pleasing self and good 
voice, rapidly secured her friends and a position 
in a fashionable church-choir. Here Kent heard 
her in a short but effectively rendered solo. Un- 
susceptible as he had been in the past, the sacred- 
ness of her religiously inspired face appealed to 
him strangely. Within a fortnight a new and 
profound element was to complicate his life, for 



UNTANGLING THE SNARL 147 

he met Miss Fullington and took her out to dinner 
at the home of a classmate, whose mother was 
befriending the young singer. The spell of her 
charm wakened the power of his desire. Whether 
it was from the stimulation of her inherent differ- 
ence to other women he had known, or whether 
deep within, and as yet untouched, there was a 
fineness which instinctively recognized and re- 
sponded to fineness, we may not say with cer- 
tainty. He was remote from her every standard, 
she thought, and her seeming indifference was a 
conscious self-defense. But she inspired him 
with a sincerity of purpose he had not known be- 
fore. He was frank; he was potently insistent 
and "hopeless," he told her, "unless you save 
me. ' ' Thus unwittingly he appealed to the mother 
sympathy, the strongest a good woman can feel. 

They were engaged and the wedding was all 
that any bride could have desired. Then ten 
weeks abroad, beautiful, revealing weeks, for 
Francis Kent, sober and in love, was much of a 
man. Still it was only ten weeks before the 
formal social function, with its inevitable array of 
wines, turned this kindly, genial lover, in an hour, 
into a coarse, inconsiderate drunkard. Confined 
for a week in their state-room on the steamer 
home with her husband, now a beast in drink, 
this poor, pure, uninitiated wife realized purga- 
tory. Dark days were those next three years for 
them both. When sober, he was self-abased by 
the knowledge of the suffering of this woman 
he so truly loved, or was restlessly striving against 
desires which only alcohol could sate; while she 



148 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

was alternately fearing the debauch or fighting 
to keep her respect and love intact through the 
debauchery. For him, the battle waged on be- 
tween love and desire, his love for her — his one 
inspiration, while desire was constantly reenf orced 
by the taunts of his godless fatalism and the dead 
weight of his hopelessness. 

Then came the day which is hallowed in the 
lives of even the ignorant and coarse, the day 
in which the young wife gladly suffers through 
the lengthening hours and goes down to the verge 
of the Dark Eiver, that in her nearness to death 
she may find that other life, the everlasting seal 
of her marriage. In all the beauty of eagerly 
desired motherhood, Martha Kent bore her baby- 
boy. The father was not there. She did not 
then know all. They shielded her. He had been 
taken the night before to a private asylum, enter- 
ing his third attack of delirium tremens, and while 
his wife in pain and prayer made life more 
sacred, he, struggling and uncontrolled, beast-like, 
was making life more repulsive. The pain of her 
motherhood never approached the agony of her 
wifehood, when she knew, while the pride of fa- 
therhood was utterly submerged in the poignancy 
of his self-abasement, when he realized. 

Another physician had treated him during this 
attack. He, too, wished to help. He talked with 
the humiliated man most earnestly, insisting that 
he had never truly tried, that in the past he had 
depended on his weak will and the inspiration of 
his devotion. He had not had scientific help. He 
assured him that he did not have incurable hard- 



UNTANGLING THE SNARL 149 

ening of the liver and expressed, as his earnest 
belief, that there were places where the help he 
needed could be given — that there was hope. 
Plans were made and Francis Kent gave his 
pledge, expressed in a voluntary commitment, to 
carry out a six months' system of treatment. 
"Not," as he assured the physician-in-charge, 
"that I can be saved from the effects of what has 
gone before. I know my heredity is too strong 
for that. But by every obligation of manhood I 
owe my wife and boy five years of decent living. 
If you can make that possible, I shall be satis- 
fied." 

The professional help Kent received, physically, 
was deep-reaching. It accurately adjusted food 
to energy expended. Forty self-indulgent ciga- 
rettes were transformed into three manly cigars, 
and he was put to work with his hands — those 
patrician hands which had not made a brow to 
sweat, for serious purpose, in three generations. 
His physical response in six weeks completely 
altered his appearance. The snap of healthy liv- 
ing reappeared; the pessimism of his fatalism was 
displaced by much of quiet cheer. Life was again 
becoming a good thing. But the professional help 
he received mentally was what untangled the 
snarl. His advisor was fortunately able to go 
the whole way with him as he discussed his heredi- 
tary ' * inevitables ' ' — the whole way and then, sav- 
ingly, some steps beyond — and for the first time 
Kent's understanding, now reaching for higher 
truths than would satisfy the fatalist, was wisely, 
personally conducted through a wholesome inter- 



150 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

pretation of the distinction between the heritage 
of germinal and of somatic attributes, that vital 
distinction: that it takes but two ancestors to de- 
termine the species of the offspring, but that the 
individual's personal heritage is the result of, 
and may be influenced by, a thousand forerunners ; 
that dominant characteristics, compelling though 
they seem, may be neutralized by obscure, reces- 
sive characteristics. More than this, his new 
counselor was able to convince him that the real 
damage he had to overcome was not a fore- 
ordained physical fate, for that was in a peculiar 
way largely in his own hands, now that he was 
properly started, but was the mental tangle of his 
unholy fatalism which absolutely did not repre- 
sent truth; that he and all rational, normal men 
have been given wills and are as free as gods 
to choose, within certain large limitations. 
Francis Kent 's mind had been well trained. Self- 
ish desire had made of him a fatalist. A more 
beautiful desire led him into a constructive 
optimism. He thought deeply for a week, per- 
chance he prayed, for he knew that she was pray- 
ing from the depths of her soul. He outlined for 
himself a new, thoroughly wholesome mode of life, 
and in half an hour's heart-to-heart conference 
convinced his doctor-friend that more had been 
accomplished in two months than could have been 
promised at the end of the six months planned. 
So the new Francis Kent was told to go back and 
make a new home for his wife and the new baby. 
Years have passed — blessed years in the old 
mansion. There is no hint of cirrhosis of the 



UNTANGLING THE SNARL 151 

liver. There has never been a drop of anything 
alcoholic served in that house since his return. 
There are two healthy chaps of boys; there is a 
wonderfully happy woman; there is a fine, manly 
man, the respected and efficient president of an 
influential bank. Patient, wise hands carefully 
untangled the knotted snarl. The thread was un- 
broken. 



CHAPTEE XV 
FROM FEAK TO FAITH 

Thirty some years ago a baby girl came into a 
Virginia home. Her birth was a matter of family 
indifference; not specially needed, she was not 
particularly wanted. Her father, reared in a 
small town, having attained only moderate suc- 
cess as combination bookkeeper, cashier and clerk 
in a general store, could not enthuse over an ar- 
rival which would increase the burden of family 
expense. He was a man of good Virginia stock, 
not fired by large ambitions. An ubiquitous cud 
of fine-cut, flattening his cheek and saturating his 
veins, possibly explains his life of semicontent 
— for tobacco is a sedative. The mother was a 
washed-out, frail-looking reminder of youthful at- 
tractions, essentially of the nervous type. She 
was not without pride in her Cavalier stock and 
the dash of Cavalier blood it brought. The elder 
sister had none of her mother. Aspiring socially, 
she was reserved, pedantic, platitudinizing, thor- 
oughly self-sufficient. She finished well up in 
her class in a small, woman's so-called "col- 
lege ' ' and lived with such prudence and exercised 
such foresight that, in spite of her Methodist rear- 
ing, she wedded the young, local, Episcopal rector, 

152 



FROM FEAR TO FAITH 153 

and, childless but still self-sufficient, " lived happy 
ever after.' ' 

Our little Virginia's home surroundings gave 
her all material necessities, many comforts and oc- 
casional luxuries, but it was a home of narrow in- 
terests. Its own immediate affairs, including big 
sister's successes; critically, the doings of the 
neighborhood, and unquestioningly, the happen- 
ings of the church circle, comprised the themes 
of home discourse. Markedly lacking in beauty 
was that home — no music, a few perfunctory pic- 
tures, a parlor furnished to suit the local dealer 's 
taste and stock, a few sets of books — the 
successful contribution of unctuous book agents. 
All converse was lacking in ideals save the hap- 
hazard ones brought home by the children from 
school. There was no pretense of unselfishness, 
the conception was foreign to that home's atmos- 
phere. The religious teaching was of formalism 
and fear. The services of the church were 
regularly attended, and from time to time the 
children's discipline was augmented by refer- 
ences to the certain wrath of God. Into 
this home came Virginia to be reared un- 
der most irregular training, dependent on a 
combination of her mother's feelings and her 
sister's conventions — the father's influence was 
negative, his was a well-bred nicotine indiffer- 
ence. In the little girl's life, every home appeal 
was emotional. During the mother's more rare, 
comfortable days, she exacted few restrictions, 
but much more often fear methods marked her use 
of authority: fear of punishment, fear of the In- 



154 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

visible, and, from her sister, fear of "what folks 
will say" were the chief home influences molding 
this young life. Such appeals found in her sen- 
sitive nature a rich soil. No single consistent ef- 
fort was ever made to substitute reason for emo- 
tional supremacy, as she developed. At times 
her feelings would run rampant — what was to 
keep them in order but disorganizing fear? — 
while too often her mother weakly rewarded Vir- 
ginia's most stormy outbreaks by acceding to her 
erratic desires. 

In one element did this home take pride. As 
true Virginians, the good things of the table were 
procured at any cost. Good eating was a pride 
— and rapid eating became the child's habit. Yet 
with all the sacrifices of time and effort, the rich- 
ness of their table cost, and in spite of the fact 
that eating was ever in the forefront of family 
plans and efforts, no conception of the true art of 
dining was ever theirs. 

At sixteen Virginia was attractive, with re- 
markably clear, olive skin, with hair, eyes and eye- 
brows a peculiarly soft chestnut. Fun-loving, 
thoughtless, vivacious, spasmodically aggressive, 
naturally athletic, capable of many fine intuitions, 
she finished the local high school with a good 
record, for she was mentally alert. Still most of 
her thinking was of the emotional type, and smiles 
were quick and tears were quick, and upon a feel- 
ing-basis rested her decisions. The tender-heart- 
edness of a child never left her, and when trusted 
and encouraged she had always shown an excellent 
capacity for good work. She was essentially 



FROM FEAR TO FAITH 155 

capable of intense friendships, tinder the sway of 
which no sacrifice was questioned, but her stormy 
nature made friendships precarious. Pervading 
her life was a large conscientiousness. Her fear- 
conscience was acute — never an unwholesome im- 
pulse but fear-conscience rebuked and tortured. 
Few bedtimes were peaceful to her, because at 
that quiet hour remorse, entirely disproportionate 
to the wrong, lashed her miserably. Her love- 
conscience, too, was richly developed, and for 
love 's sake she would have become a martyr. Her 
duty-conscience was yet in its infancy and held 
weak council in her plans and rarely swayed her 
from desire. 

After a year of normal-school training, she 
secured a primary grade in a near town school, 
and at nineteen, when she became an earner, there 
were two Virginias; the beautiful Virginia was a 
woman of appealing tenderness — body, heart and 
soul yearned for some adequate return of the rich- 
ness of devotion which she felt herself capable of 
giving. Sentiment and capacity for love were 
unconsciously reaching out for satisfying expres- 
sion, and the beauty of this tenderness shone forth 
to make appealing even her weaknesses. The 
other Virginia was a conglomerate of unhappy 
and harmful emotions — impatient in the face of 
small irregularities, frequently irritable to un- 
pleasantness, and dominated by the false sensi- 
tiveness of unmerited pride. Under provocation, 
anger, quick-flaming, unreasonable and unreason- 
ing, burned itself out in poorly restrained explo- 
sions — a quarter-hour of wrath, a half-hour of 



156 OUE NEKVOUS FRIENDS 

tears and a half-day of almost incapacitating 
headache. She was ambitious and had rebelled at 
her limitations, especially as she grew to realize 
the smallness and emptiness of the home-life. 
She resented her sister's superior attitude, her 
officious poise, her college-education authority. 
But the damning defect was the remorseless grip 
of fear on mind, body and spirit. Through 
ignorant training, she was afraid in the dark, even 
afraid of the dark ; a morbid, cringing terror pos- 
sessed her when she was alone in the night. 
Even the protecting safety of her own bed could 
not save her from the jangle of false alarms with 
which her imagination peopled the shadows. A 
second gripping dread — -one all too common with 
harmfully taught, southern girls — was fear of 
negroes ; a horrible, indefinite, haunting apprehen- 
sion chilled her veins, not only when associated 
with them, but even more viciously when she was 
alone with her thoughts. And when added to 
these was her superstitious fear of the Lord, 
magnifying the evil of her ways, threatening, per- 
vading, bringing no hint of Divine love, the prep- 
aration was ample for the forthcoming emotional 
chaos. 

At twenty-eight she was a sick woman. 
Through devotion to the kindly principal of her 
school, a devotion not unmixed with sentiment, 
she had worked intensely; quick, interested, al- 
most capable, she had worked and worried. 
School-discipline early loomed large as a rock 
threatening disaster, dragging into her conscious- 
ness a sinister fear of failure. Thirty little ones, 



FROM FEAR TO FAITH 157 

from almost as many different homes, represent- 
ing a motley variety of home-training, looked to 
her to mold them into an orderly, happy unit. 
Some of her little tots were as thorns in her flesh 
— she couldn't keep her arms from around others; 
while some afternoons the natural restlessness 
of them all set her head to throbbing wretchedly. 
Her own emotional life not having found order 
or calm, she from the first failed to develop either 
in her charges. Visitors became a dread. Her 
only solace was the short conferences she had 
with the principal after school. But to hear his 
step approaching during class-time frightened her 
cruelly. Her order was poor. He knew it. The 
visitors saw it. And the more she struggled to 
master the problem of school-discipline, the 
greater grew the menace of her own unorderly 
training. Within a few months she was translat- 
ing her emotional exhaustion into terms of over- 
work. The penalty of unmerited food had pro- 
duced an autotoxic anaemia, and she was pale and 
weepy, easily fatigued, sleeping poorly, with the 
boggy thyroid and overactive tendon reflexes so 
common in subacidosis. She had to give up her 
school. After six months' ineffectual resting at 
home, she entered a special hospital where, after 
some weeks of intensive treatment, her physical 
restoration was remarkable. The marriage of 
her sister and death of her mother closed the 
home, and she went to live with a widowed aunt, 
the aunt who had managed her household and 
her ministerial spouse to perfection. It was 
probably Paul's injunction alone which kept her 



158 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

from taking her complacent husband's place in the 
pulpit and delivering the sermons she had so 
literally inspired. Here was an atmosphere of 
sanctity, but still no hint of true, personal giving, 
no expression of willing sacrifice, and Virginia 
felt keenly this lack, for in the hospital she had 
had a vision. There she had seen suffering soft- 
ened by gentleness, there empty lives were filled 
from generous hearts, and men and women in- 
spired to make new and better starts. She had 
visioned the nobleness of giving — and the unan- 
swered call of her mother-nature had responded. 
She was not fully well, she was not deeply living, 
she had never fulfilled the best of self, and she 
hungered for the hospital. Her aunt's conven- 
tional pride was echoed by the laws and the in- 
laws, and positive, later peremptory objections 
were urged against her entering nursing. Again 
the headaches returned, the physical expression 
of her emotional unhappiness, and finally, almost 
in recklessness, certainly in desperation, she cast 
her lot in the self-effacing demands of a student- 
nurse's life in a city hospital, far from family 
and friends. 

How shall we tell of the next three years? 
Training, reeducation, evolution? — some of all 
perhaps. They were years of much travail. 
Physical wholeness was won promptly through the 
wholesome habits of active, daily effort, routine, 
regularity and rational diet. There was suffer- 
ing — months of suffering, under correction, for re- 
bellion had long been a habit, and hospital dis- 



FROM FEAR TO FAITH 159 

cipline is military in character. But she had 
given her pledge, and fear-conscience and love- 
conscience were later augmented by duty-con- 
science, and she never seriously thought of desert- 
ing. Cheer expression is demanded in the nurse's 
relations with her patients, and irritability and im- 
patience slowly faded through hourly touch with 
greater suffering; and the cheer habit grew into 
cheer feeling. The old storms of anger seemed 
incongruous in the imperturbable atmosphere of 
the hospital, moreover her dignity as a nurse could 
not be risked. Thus was she helped till the 
solidity of self-control made her safe. Her truly 
formidable battle was with fear — no one can know 
what she faced alone on night duty. Her dread 
of the dark was overcome painfully when through 
helpful counsel she gained an intelligent insight 
into her defect, and was inspired to apply 
for night duty in excess of her regular schedule. 
Later, at her own request, she performed alone the 
last duties for the dead, that she might put fear 
under her feet. Her dread of negroes gradually 
gave place to a better understanding of the race 
through the daily association of ministration on 
the ward, reenforced by personal confidence 
in her own strength and skill, growing out of a 
wholesome training in self-defense — a training her 
love for athletics and her growing understanding 
of her fear-weakness moved her to take on her 
off-duty time. She became competent; anxious 
to help, her fineness of intuition and her capacity 
for devotion with her vision of service made her 



160 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

in every way worthy. And finally her fear of 
the Lord was lost in a wholesome faith in His 
" Well-done !" 

To-day, hers is a life of peace. Emotional in- 
stability and wretchedness have been displaced by 
habitual right feeling. Stabilizing her emotions 
has not impoverished, but enriched her nature. 
She has mastered the art of enjoying, for self-in- 
terests have expanded into love for service. To- 
day she is a capable, efficient, cheerful, whole- 
some, self-forgetting woman, filled with a faith 
in an able, worthy self — a God-given faith. 



CHAPTEE XVI 

JUDICIOUS HARDENING 

In the softened light of a richly furnished office 
two physicians were seated. It was the elder who 
spoke. Drawn and sad was his cleanly featured, 
tense face; his clear skin and slightly whitened, 
dark hair belied his nearly seventy years. He 
was the anxious, unhappy father of a sick, un- 
happy daughter, whom the nurse was preparing 
in an adjoining room for examination by Dr. 
Franklin, the younger physician. ' ' I mean no dis- 
courtesy, Doctor, when I say that I don't believe 
any one understands my girl's case. Her brother 
and sister are healthy youngsters and have always 
been so. I may have taken a few drinks too 
many now and then, but few men of my age can 
stand more night -work or do more practice than 
I can, and I've about rounded my three-score 
and ten. Wanda was a perfect child. She is my 
oldest. Her mother did pet and spoil her, always 
humored her from the first, but she was a cheerful, 
bright little thing. She finished high school at 
fifteen and did a good year's study at Monticello. 
All her trouble seemed to start that spring when 
she was vaccinated. She had never had worse 
than the measles before. She didn 't seem to know 
how to take sickness, though the Lord knows she's 

161 



162 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

had plenty of chances to learn since her sore arm; 
and the school-doctor had to lance a small place, 
and this kept her away from Commencement 
where they had some part for her to do. She 
didn't get well in time to spend the month in 
Michigan with her room-mate, and she always said 
that if she could have had this trip she would 
never have been so bad. It was a mighty hard 
summer with me, too, that year, and probably 
I didn't notice her enough — anyway she's been a 
half -invalid these eighteen years. It's pain and 
tenderness in this nerve and then in that one, 
and she hasn 't walked a whole mile in fifteen years 
because of her sciatica. I have sent her to Hot 
Springs, one summer she spent at Saratoga, and 
she has taken two courses of mud-baths. When 
she was twenty-six, she lived for four months in 
Dr. Moore's home. He and I were college-mates 
and he had been mighty good in treating rheu- 
matic troubles. After awhile he decided it was 
her diet and she lived a whole year in B Sani- 
tarium and she gained weight too, there, and 
hasn't eaten any meat to speak of nor drunk any 
coffee since. She often complains of her eyes but 
the specialists say they are all right, that that 
isn't the trouble. Two of the best surgeons in 
our part of the country have refused to operate 
on her even when I begged one of them to open 
her and see if he couldn't find out what was the 
matter. Three of her doctors have said it was her 
nerves, but I don't think any of them know. You 
know I don't mean to say anything that will reflect 
on your specialty, but you never did see a case 



JUDICIOUS HARDENING 163 

of only nerves put a healthy young girl in bed and 
keep her there suffering so that I've had to give 
her aspirin a hundred times and even morphin 
by hypodermic to get her quiet, and off and on 
for five years she 's had ten, and sometimes fifteen 
grains of veronal at midnight, nights when she 
couldn't get to sleep. If it's only nerves, then 
I've got a mighty heap to learn about nerves. I 
think in forty-five years practicing medicine a 
man ought to know enough about them to recog- 
nize them in his own family. But something's got 
to be done. Wanda's making a hospital of our 
home. We daren't slam a door, or her sister 
mustn't play the piano but her headaches start; 
and if Eosie boils turnips or even brings an onion 
into the house, it goes to Wanda's stomach and 
it takes a hypodermic to quiet her vomiting and 
a week to get over the trouble. 

"That child of mine is just like a different crea- 
ture from the fine little girl she was at twelve when 
my buggy turned over one night and broke my 
leg. Why, she nursed me better than her mother. 
She just couldn't do enough for me. That little 
thing would come down just as quiet as she could 
— sometimes every night — to see that that leg 
was all right and hadn't got twisted; while now 
she expects attention from everybody in the house 
and from some of the neighbors. She will even 
send for Eosie just when she is trying to get 
dinner started and keep her a half-hour telling 
just what she wants and how it's got to be fixed, 
then more often she '11 just nibble at it just enough 
to spoil it for everybody else, after Eosie 's spent 



164 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

an hour getting it ready for her. Tonics don't 
help her a bit. I've given her iron, arsenic and 
strychnin enough to cure a dozen weak women. 
She's always too weak to exercise, lies in bed 
two days out of three, reads and sometimes writes 
a letter or two. But before Christmas comes 
(you know she is mighty cunning with her fingers ; 
she can sew and embroider and make all sorts of 
pretty, womanish things) she works so hard mak- 
ing presents that she's just clear done out for 
the next two months and won't leave her room 
for weeks. That's about all she does from one 
year's end to another, but complain of her sick- 
ness, and of late years criticize the rest of us 
and dictate to the whole household what they 
must do for themselves, and just out-and-out de- 
mand what she wants them to do for her. She 
really treats her stepmother like a dog, and often 
she is so disrespectful to me that I certainly 
would thrash her if she wasn't so sick. She was 
a fine child but her suffering has wrecked her dis- 
position. She and the rest of us would be better 
off if she'd die. You see, Doctor, I haven't much 
faith left, but she's been bent so long a time on 
coming to you, and is willing to spend the little 
money her mother left her, to have her own way. 
Now, I am doctor enough to stand by you in what 
you decide if you say you can cure her, and if she 
gets well, I'll pay every cent of the bill, but if 
she don't, the Lord will just have to help us all, 
though I suppose I'll have to take care of her as 
long as she lives for she won't have a cent after 
she gets through with this. ' ' 



JUDICIOUS HARDENING 165 

Wanda Fairchild lay expectant on the examina- 
tion table, pale, almost wan; her blue eyes, fair 
skin and even her attractive, curling, blonde hair 
seemed lusterless, save when her face lighted with 
momentary anticipation at some sound suggest- 
ing Dr. Franklin's coming. Much indeed of her 
feeling life had grown false through the blight- 
ing touch of her useless years of useless sickness. 
But genuine was her greeting. "Oh, Doctor, I 
am so glad to be here! You remember Mrs. 
Melton. You cured her and she has been well 
ever since, and for over two years I've been 
begging papa to bring me here, but he hasn't any 
hope. He's tried so hard and spent so much. 
Now you've got to get me well. They all say 
this is my last chance. I certainly can't endure 
these awful pains much longer. I know they're 
going to drive me crazy some day if something 
isn't done to stop them. Just look at my arms. 
That's where I bit them last night to keep from 
screaming out in the sleeper, for I wouldn't take 
any medicine. I wanted you to see me without 
any of that awful stuff to make me different than 
I truly am. You will surely cure me, won't you, 
Doctor, so I can go back home soon, as strong as 
Mrs. Melton is, and live like other girls, and have 
company and go to parties and dance and take 
auto-rides and have a good time before I get too 
old — or die? Oh, Doctor, you don't know what a 
horrible life I live! Every day is just torture. 
I suppose they do as well as they know at home, 
but not one of them, not even papa, has any con- 
ception of how I suffer or they would show more 



166 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

consideration. It is terrible enough to be sick 
when you are understood and when everybody is 
doing the right thing to help you. I know my trip 
has made me worse, for my spine is throbbing now 
like a raw nerve. It would be a relief if some 
one would put burning coals on my back. You 
know there 's nothing worse than nerve-pains. ' ' 

Dr. Franklin smiled quietly. How often he had 
heard poor sufferers hyperbolize their suffering! 
How keenly he could see the distinction between 
the real and the false in illness! How certainly 
he knew that such exaggerated rantings and wail- 
ings stood for illness of mind or soul, but not of 
body! The physical examination, nevertheless, 
was extremely thorough. Nothing can be guessed 
at in the intricate war with disease. 

"Yes, I was happy as a child. Mother under- 
stood me ; no one else ever has. She knew when 
I needed petting. I did well at school and really 
loved Myrtle Covington, my room-mate at the 
Sem. Just think, she married — married a poor 
preacher, but I know she is happy, for she is well 
and has a home of her own and three children. 
I don 't see how they make ends meet on eighteen- 
hundred and no parsonage. You know we had a 
smallpox scare at the Sem. that spring and all 
had to be vaccinated. I scratched mine, or some- 
thing, and for weeks nearly died of blood-poison- 
ing. That is where my neuritis started. They 
had to lance my arm to save my life, and when 
you examined me I had to grit my teeth to keep 
from screaming out when you took hold of that 
cut place. You believe I am brave, don't you, 



JUDICIOUS HARDENING 167 

Doctor! It hurts there yet, but I didn't want to 
disturb you in the examination. Do you think 
there is any chance for me, Doctor ? ' ' 

At this point the physician nodded to the nurse, 
who left the room. 

"And what else happened that summer!" he 
asked her kindly. 

"Well, I was in bed over three months with my 
vaccination and my lanced arm, and I had a special 
nurse, and couldn't eat any solid food for days. 
They never would tell me how high my fever was ; 
they were afraid of frightening me, but I wouldn 't 
have cared. I used to wish I could die." 

"Why, child, what could have happened to 
make a young, happy girl of sixteen wish to die? 
Was there something really serious that you 
haven't told?" 

"Oh, Doctor, didn't papa tell you? No, I know 
he wouldn't. He probably don't know — he can't 
know what it cost me. Oh! must I tell you? 
Don't make me, Doctor! Oh, my poor head! 
Doctor, it will burst, please do something for it. 
Oh, my poor mamma ! She loved me so much and 
she understood me, too." And tears came and 
sobs, and for a time neither spoke. 

"Tell me of your mother," the doctor said. 

Then the story, the unhappy story, whined out 
in that self -pitying voice which ever bespeaks the 
loss of pride — that characteristic of wholesome 
normal womanhood. Her parents had probably 
never been happy together. The spring she was 
in the Seminary, ill, her mother left home. There 
was a separation. That fall her father re- 



168 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

married, as did the mother later, who lived in 
her new home but a few months, dying that same 
winter. From the first, Wanda had hated her 
stepmother. U I despise her. I can never trust 
Father again. I can never trust any one and I 
loathe home, and I want to die. Please, Doctor, 
don't make me live. I have nothing to live for!" 

Here was the woman's sickness — the handiwork 
of an indulgent mother who had never taught her 
daughter the sterling ideals of unselfish living. 
This mother had gone. A better trained woman 
had entered the home, but her every effort to 
develop character in the stepdaughter was re- 
sented. Illness, that favorite retreat of thou- 
sands, became this undeveloped woman's refuge. 
Year after year, sickness proved her defense for 
all assaults of importuning duty. Sickness, 
weakly accepted at first, later grew, and as an 
octopus, entwined its incapacitating tentacles 
about and slowly strangled a life into worth- 
lessness. 

"Your daughter will have to leave Alton for 
nine months. Six of these she will spend on a 
Western ranch ; for three months she will work in 
the city slums. Miss Leighton will be her nurse 
and companion. Life was deliberately planned to 
develop wills. Miss Fairchild has lost the ability 
to will until, at thirty-four, she is abso- 
lutely lacking in the power to willingly will the 
effort which is essential to rational, healthy liv- 
ing. She is but a whimpering weakling, a coward 
who for years has run from misfortune. Your 
daughter must be turned from discomfort to duty, 



JUDICIOUS HARDENING 169 

from pain to productive effort ; her margin of re- 
sistance must be pushed beyond the suggestive 
power of the average headache, periodic discom- 
fort, or desire for ease; she must learn to trans- 
form a thousand draining dislikes into a thousand 
constructive likes. Finally, we hope to teach her 
the hidden challenge which is brought us all by the 
inevitable. To-day she is more sensitive than a 
normal three-months-old baby. She must be 
judiciously hardened into womanhood.' ' 

We cannot say that the troubled father gathered 
hope from this, to him, unique exposition of the 
invalid's case, but sufficient confidence came to 
induce him to promise his loyal support to the 
"experiment" for the planned period of nine 
months. The patient rebelled. She had come 
"to be Dr. Franklin's patient." She couldn't 
"stand the trip." She wouldn't "go a step." 

Yes, it seemed cruel. Three days and nights 
they were on the sleeper; forty miles they drove 
over increasingly poor roads to the big ranch in 
the Montana foot-hills where everybody else 
seemed so well, so coarsely well, she thought. 
After the first week the aspirin and the veronal 
gave out and there was no "earthly chance" of 
getting more. Then when she refused to exer- 
cise, she got nothing to eat but a glass of warm 
milk with a slice of miserably coarse bread 
crumbed in, and the mountain air did make her 
hungry ; and when she was ugly, she was left alone, 
absolutely alone in that dreary room, and even 
Lee, the Chinese cook, wouldn't look in the window 
when she begged him for something else to eat. 



170 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

How she did love Kosie those " weary days of 
abuse''! Miss Leighton was always polite, 
though she would not stay with her a minute when 
she got "fussy," but would be gone for an hour, 
visiting and laughing and carrying on with the 
men-folks in the big-room. She had seemed so 
kind before they left the East and she was kind 
now, at times when she had her own way, but 
she was being paid to nurse a sick girl, and she 
had no right to leave her alone for hours simply 
because she whined or refused to do her bidding 
on the instant. There was a young doctor there 
who could have helped her if he would, but he had 
no more heart than the rest, and when the nurse 
called him in to make an examination, he was as 
noncommittal as a isphinx and gave her no speck 
of satisfaction, only telling her to do what the 
nurse said. Bitter letters she sent home, but 
somehow they all were answered by Dr. Franklin, 
who wrote her little notes in reply which made her 
angry — then ashamed. Verbal outbreaks there 
were, and physical ones, too, a few times, which 
the nurse calmly and humiliatingly credited to her 
exercise-account and brought her more to eat, say- 
ing that scrapping was as healthful as work in 
making strength. But somehow, she couldn't hate 
Miss Leighton long, as behind all her "cruelty" 
Wanda realized that a thoughtful friendship was 
ever waiting. One day they took a drive; when 
four miles from the ranch-house something hap- 
pened, and they were asked to get out. They 
stood looking off over the ever-climbing hills to 
those remote, granite castles of the far Eockies. 



JUDICIOUS HARDENING 171 

The team started, and as they turned, the driver 
waved his apparent regrets. They walked back 
— four miles. Wanda had not performed such 
a feat in nearly twenty years. She walked off 
her resentment, in truth she was a bit proud, and 
the nurse certainly did bring her a fine supper, 
the first square meal she had been given in Mon- 
tana. This was the turning point. 

Walking, riding, working, camping in the open, 
sleeping in smoke and drafts after long hikes, 
carrying her own blanket and pack — all be- 
came matters-of -course. From 96 to 130 — nearly 
thirty-five fine pounds — she put on. She even 
learned bare-back riding, and wove a rug from 
wool she had sheared, cleaned, dyed and spun. 
Long since, she had realized that Miss Leighton 
had only been carrying out Dr. Franklin's orders. 
That fall they came East to Baltimore. She 
worked with Miss Leighton in the tenement dis- 
tricts. She saw Dr. Franklin weekly. He now 
explained the principles underlying her ruthless, 
physical restoration. She learned to recognize 
her years of deficient will-living. The doctor re- 
vealed to her, as well, her great debt to her home, 
explained to her now cleared mind the poverty 
of the love she had borne, and wakened her to the 
stepmother's true excellence of character. Her 
opened eyes saw the great tragedy of defective 
living as reflected in the lives of want and evil 
in those to whom she was daily ministering. 
Her life had been blest in comparison. 

A message came that her stepmother was ill — 
could she come home and help? That day this 



172 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

girl put off childhood and took on womanhood. 
She returned to her family a new woman, a 
thoughtful, considerate woman, an almost silent 
woman — save when speech is golden; a woman 
who makes friends and who remembers them in a 
hundred beautiful ways, a working woman, a 
home-maker for a happier father, for an almost 
dependent stepmother; a woman who was scien- 
tifically compelled to exchange self-condoling 
weakness for strength, who, when strengthened 
against her will, chose and lives the worthy life 
of self-giving. We wish her well, this new 
woman, who is repaying to her home a debt 
of years. 



CHAPTER XVII 
THE SICK SOUL 

"Oh, 'War,' yon just must win! I know you 
will ! ' ' " Keep a stiff upper lip, Old Fellow, and 
give them the best you've got." "Watch your 
knees, Buddie dear, and don't let them shake. 
Just think of us before you start, and remember 
we're pulling for you." — "Yes! and praying 
for you," whispered Eva Martin, who was shak- 
ing his hand just as the conductor called, "All 
aboard." And as Warren Waring gracefully 
swung aboard the last Pullman, the entire senior 
class of Beloit High gave the school-yell, with 
three cheers and a tiger for "War Waring." 

What occasion could be more thrilling to a 
susceptible, imaginative sixteen-year-old boy than 
this demonstration of the aristocratic peerage of 
youth? For a half -hour he had been the center 
of admiration and encouraging attention, the 
recipient of a rapid fire of well-wishing, of advice 
serious and humorous, and unquestionably the 
subject of not a few unspoken messages directed 
heavenward. The kindly eyes of the old Beloit 
station have looked out upon many a scene of 
enthusiastic greeting and hearty well-wishing, but 
rarely has it seen these good offices extended to one 
of more apparent merit than handsome Warren E. 

173 



174 OUE NEEVOUS FRIENDS 

Waring. One of the National Temperance socie- 
ties had been utilizing the promising declamatory 
powers of the high school students of the country, 
through a series of county, district and state 
competitions, to influence the public. The contest 
in Wisconsin had finally eliminated all but the 
select few who were to contest for the temper- 
ance-oratorical supremacy of the state, and for a 
gold medal, as large as a double eagle, which was 
to be awarded by judges from the University 
faculty. The good wishes and cheers, stimulating 
advice, and silent prayers at the Beloit station 
had all been inspired by enthusiasm and con- 
fidence and love for the unusually gifted com- 
rade now leaving for the competition. 

For nearly a generation Squire Waring had 
struggled manfully, kindly, quietly, on his little 
farm up Eock Eiver, adding a little now and then 
to the farm-income by the all-too-infrequent fees 
derived from his office as justice-of-the-peace. If 
the Squire had been a better farmer and less in- 
terested in books, especially in his yellow-backed 
law-books, the eking might not have been so con- 
tinuous; and if his good wife had not been 
snatched away, at untimely thirty-five, by one of 
those accidents which we call providential, leav- 
ing a forty-year-old father alone with a five-year- 
old boy, her good sense would undoubtedly have 
made times easier with the Squire. As it was, 
his sister came to be mother in this little home. 
Good, steadfast Aunt Fannie she was, a woman 
without a vision, who accepted what the day 
brought with religiously unquestioning thanks. 



THE SICK SOUL 175 

But as the only son grew and his charms multi- 
plied, as the evidence of his gifts became mani- 
fest, the impracticable father let slip all per- 
sonal ambition. The dreams he had dreamed for 
himself were to be fulfilled in his son, who would 
increase, even as he decreased. So it was that 
on his boy's tenth birthday the father turned 
from his ambition of years, to represent his 
county in the state legislature, and after forty- 
five doubled the time and strength devoted to his 
less than a hundred acres. " There must be 
money for the boy's education," he told his sister 
Fannie, "even if you and I have to skimp for the 
rest of our days. He's got the making of a state 
senator." The father was mistaken only in that 
he so limited his boy's possibilities. 

The Squire helped the little fellow in his studies, 
and he entered the second grade of the near-by 
Beloit High School the fall before he was four- 
teen. The train-schedule was so arranged that 
he could return home every night; though, when- 
ever the Squire felt that the farm-work justified 
it, and there was no occasion for his honorable 
court, they would drive to town together. This 
was the Squire's one joy. And proud he was to 
share in acknowledging the greetings which came 
from all sides, even when they drove through the 
best part of town in the old buggy — to feel the 
universal popularity in which his boy was held. 
Then there was the added satisfaction of a 
minute's chat with some one of the teachers, for 
they all had praise, and never a word of censure. 
Enjoyment enough this dear man got from these 



176 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

irregular trips to town to lighten for weeks the, 
to him, unnatural farm-labor; while petty of- 
fenders appearing before his tribunal were dealt 
with almost gently after one of these adventures 
in happiness. 

Many a wealth-sated father would have ex- 
changed his flesh and blood and thrown in his 
bank-balance to boot, could he have looked for- 
ward to so worthy an heir as promised to bless 
Squire Waring. The boy seemed to have been 
born to meet life successfully, whatever its chal- 
lenge. Strong almost to sturdiness, yet agile and 
accurate in movement, he had " covered all sorts 
of terrritory around ' short,' and could hit the 
ball on the nose when it counted/ ' and to him 
went the unprecedented glory of a forty-yard run 
for a touch-down and goal in a High School vs. 
Varsity Freshmen game. His were muscles which 
seemed to have been molded by a sculptor 's hand. 
His face was manly. His waving dark-brown 
hair, deep-blue eyes, strong nose and rarely 
turned chin, his unfailing good-nature, his unques- 
tioned nerve, his mental keenness and clearness, 
his remarkable power of expression, whether in 
recitation, school- theatricals or at young people's 
meetings; his instinctive courtesy of greeting, 
his apparent openness and honesty of dealing, his 
fairness to antagonist on field and platform, above 
all, his devotion to his unquestionably rural 
father, had made Warren Waring a school hero, 
even a model, in a church college-town. 

What other boy in Wisconsin was so well 
equipped to win the gold medal? Sixteen years 



THE SICK SOUL 177 

and some months ! A rather youthful lad to stand 
before a thousand strange faces, to be the object of 
professorial scrutiny, to listen to the exultant 
plaudits of local partisanship; not to be, not to 
seem brazen, yet to face it all without a quake of 
knee or, and what is more rare, a tremor of voice ; 
not to forget a syllable ; and, in ten minutes, to so 
cast the spell of a winning personality over his 
hearers as to evoke a spontaneous outburst of 
applause, generous from his antagonists, en- 
thusiastic from the nonpartisan. And the medal ! 

The Professor of English honored our boy by 
having him at his home to breakfast the fol- 
lowing morning, for the double purpose of ex- 
pressing a genuine appreciation of merit, and of 
making an impressive bid for his State Univer- 
sity attendance next fall. 

Aunt Fannie 's asthma, with feminine perver- 
sity, was at its worst these March nights, and the 
Squire — fine man that he was — never let his non- 
imaginative sister know what it cost not to go 
to Madison with his son — not to "hear him win 
the medal.' ' "The trip would cost $10.00; that 
would get him a fine gold chain to wear his medal 
on, ' ' he ingeniously told her, and thus helped her 
enjoy her asthma a bit that night, for it was get- 
ting a chain for Warren's medal. 

The chain and the medal! Was it they that 
were fated to charm away manhood and nobility 
and the rich earnest of success I Was it they that 
were to entice, into this fine promise of fine liv- 
ing, crookedness of thought, unwholesomeness of 
feeling — dishonorable years? 



178 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

It was an exuberantly happy victor who re- 
turned from the Capitol City with the elaborate 
gold medal, his name in full conspicuously en- 
graved upon its face — and the youthful society 
of his school-town was at his feet. Every door 
was open. So almost without fault was he that 
few mothers objected to his companionship with 
their daughters. Yes, here was to be the flaw ! — 
he was soon to find that it was easy for him to 
have his way with a maid, a dangerous knowl- 
edge for a seventeen-year-old boy who had 
already reached higher social levels than his own 
home had known, who was much quicker of wit 
than his almost worshipful father. 

It was Eva Martin who had whispered the little 
prayer-message into his ear that expectant after- 
noon at the station, and Eva Martin's ear was des- 
tined to hear, in turn, whispered pledges of un- 
ending devotion, to hear the relentless verdict of 
unquestioned dishonor. 

High school was finished. A successful Fresh- 
man year — a Sophomore year that was disap- 
pointing to his professors was passed. The fire 
of his heart was heating many social irons. His 
earnings, so far, consisted of one gold m'edal. 
The savings from the denials at home were about 
exhausted. The boy had spent as much in the 
last two years as had been hoped would carry him 
through college. Fifteen hundred dollars could 
be raised by remortgaging the farm — it would 
take this to get him through Law-school, and he 
was eager to go to Chicago. So a second mort- 
gage was placed. A good deal happened in 



THE SICK SOUL 179 

Chicago which was not written to the Squire nor 
to Eva. Waring craved being a popular "Hail 
fellow/ ' and with men, and especially with 
women, he knew no "No" which would be dis- 
pleasing. He corresponded with Eva regularly; 
they would be married some day. He could not 
have chosen a more superior woman. She lived 
simply, with her widowed mother, and continued 
for years to conduct a private kindergarten. She 
was to save a thousand dollars and he four thou- 
sand, then the wedding! 

The gray-eyed girl from St. Louis came near 
saving Eva. Her steel-gray-eyed father's knowl- 
edge of human nature alone intervened. It was 
a chance introduction. She was pretty; she was 
wealthy. She ran up to Chicago often. Finally 
the business-like father ran up to Chicago. He 
invited young Waring to his club for dinner. 
There were tickets to the " Follies.' ' The 
younger man let no feature on the stage pass 
unnoted; the elder remarked every change in the 
young man's face. There were polite farewells, 
and a very positive twenty minutes which left 
the daughter without a question in her mind that 
further relations with young Waring held most 
threatening possibilities. Her eyes were not gray 
without reason, as she proved discreet. There 
was a bundle of uncomfortably fervid letters 
which he refused to return. 

Warren was shifty with Eva about this affair, 
and others. He was crooked, too, as the years 
passed, about his savings. It was impossible to 
account for certain expenditures, to her. At 



180 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

twenty-eight, she had her thousand dollars in the 
bank ; his supposed four thousand was a bare five 
hundred, most of which was spent on the gorgeous 
wedding-trip which he said they both deserved. 
And shortly after their return to the home, which, 
instead of being paid for in full, was heavily 
mortgaged, explanations began which could not 
explain. Clever as Waring was, his affairs were 
so involved that Eva could not avoid the suspi- 
cion and, soon after, the revelation that her 
wonderful husband's soul was without honor. It 
cannot be told, those details of her devoted efforts 
to "put him right/ ' To forgive anything, every- 
thing, she was eager, but he never could come 
across square, and as the years passed the horror 
of the uncertain "What next?" enshrouded even 
her happiest days. Still the husband had ability, 
and the wife 's efforts helped immensely, and there 
were profitable years. It was odd that, with his 
declamatory skill, he rarely had a case in court, 
but proved unusually efficient in developing a col- 
lection agency, and gradually represented the 
Bad Accounts Department of more and more im- 
portant concerns. At thirty-five he was out of 
debt. They were living well — too well it proved, 
for his nervous health. There must have been a 
neurotic taint, as expressed in Aunt Fannie 's 
asthma. Early that fall he had his first attack of 
hay-fever. For years he had been self-indulgent ; 
he always drank when drinks were offered; he 
used much tobacco and rich food. Athletic he had 
been ; and, advocate of exercise as he was when he 
gave talks to the boys, he took none himself. So 



THE SICK SOUL 181 

toxins accumulated. He stood this illness poorly. 
It was the first physical discomfort he had ever 
known. The family doctor did not help much; 
patent medicines brought relief. He was pretty 
hard to live with, these weeks. For a number of 
years he used the threat of this disorder for a 
six weeks' trip to Mackinac Island. "Finances" 
made it possible for the wife and the little boy to 
spend only two of these weeks with him. During 
the last four he always managed to keep pace 
with the fast set. The summer he was forty, the 
combination of vacation, Mackinac, and fast set 
did not ward off, in fact did not mitigate, his at- 
tacks. Waring returned home " desperate,' ' as 
he expressed it, and the family doctor succeeded 
in getting him to a competent Chicago specialist 
who did some needed nose and throat operations 
thoroughly and, in spite of careless living, 
three years of immunity passed. He had become 
unquestionably a clever handler of bad accounts, 
and could have made good, had he only been 
good. A dry, dusty summer, his old enemy, hay- 
fever — and this time a Chicago "specialist," the 
kind that advertises in the daily papers, proved 
his undoing. He gave Waring a spray, potent to 
relieve and potent to exalt him for hours beyond 
all touch of lurking apprehension. Bottle after 
bottle he used; he would not be without it. In 
a few weeks he realized that he could not be 
without it. And after the hay-fever days were 
over he kept using it, furtively now, not only for 
the exaltation it brought, but as protection from 
the hellish depression it wrought. 



182 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

For years Waring 's office assistant had been 
an efficient, devoted, weak woman who had 
managed well much of the office detail. She now 
realized that things were not "going straight,' ' 
that collections made were not being turned over to 
her, that she was being asked to falsify records. 
She never could resist his personality, and soon 
became more adroit than he in juggling figures. 
Everything went wrong fast. No one suspected 
cocain — they thought it was whiskey till Eva was 
forced to tell much to the good old doctor — details 
revealing her husband's uncouth carelessness of 
habits, his outbreaks of cruelty to her and the boy, 
his obvious and shameless lying, his unnatural 
coarseness of speech. This friend in need spent 
a bad hour, a hard hour with Waring. Calm- 
ness was ineffective, clear reasoning impossible. 
The accusation of drug-using was vehemently 
denied, and it was only the doctor's courageous 
threat to have him arrested and tried on a lunacy 
charge that broke down the false man's defiance. 

Two months of rigid treatment in a sanitarium 
did much to restore this broken man, and during 
these weeks the clever office assistant kept his 
over four-thousand dollar embezzlements from be- 
coming known. Physically and mentally, Waring 
was restored. The moral sickness was only 
palliated. When he returned he did not clean 
house ; he swept the dirt into the corners. Frank- 
facedly he lied to his wife. He met the most 
pressing of his creditors with a certificate of his 
illness, and they accepted his notes and promises. 
He almost crawled out. In so many ways, he 



THE SICK SOUL 183 

was the winning, old "War" Waring again. 
Gradually, his regime of diet and routine of exer- 
cise were replaced by periodic "big eats," little 
drinks, and many smokes. Then came the warn- 
ing sneezes and the charlatan's bottle. Irregular 
living grew apace; the accounts were again 
manipulated. A Chicago house, which had shown 
him clemency, became suspicious, and sent a rep- 
resentative who found many collections not re- 
ported. A warrant was sworn out, followed by a 
dozen others after his arrest. 

The dear old Squire, now eighty-six, sat beside 
the brave little wife at the trial. Neither of them 
thought of forsaking him. As the testimony was 
given, the old father bowed, mute — as one 
stricken. The verdict, "Guilty," was returned, 
and Judge Jefferson had evidently considered 
carefully his duty. In passing sentence he ad- 
dressed the criminal: "Warren Waring, the law 
leaves it with the trial Judge to determine the 
sentence which shall be passed on you ; it may be 
from five to fifteen years of hard labor in the 
State Penitentiary. You deserve the full extent 
of the law's punishment. I have known you from 
boyhood. Father, wife, God himself, have given 
you the best they have : an honorable name, a life- 
time of devotion, the full ten talents. For these, 
you have returned dishonor, unchastity and self- 
indulgent hypocrisy. You have begged extenua- 
tion on the basis of nervous ill-health and tem- 
porary irresponsibility, both of which you have 
brought upon yourself by violating the laws of 
right-living. It is your soul that is sick. You 



184 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

are not fit to live free and equal with righteous 
men and women. You have had love and mercy 
— they have failed. Justice will now be given a 
chance to save you. For the sake of your wife 
whose noble heart, crushed, pleads for you, I re- 
duce your deserved sentence five years. In re- 
spect for your disgraced but honorable father, five 
additional years are deducted. I pray he may 
live to see you a free man, chastened. Warren 
Waring, I sentence you to five years hard labor 
within the walls of the State Penitentiary." 



CHAPTER XVIII 
THE BATTLE WITH SELF 

The room was bare of furnishings save a cot; 
no dresser, table, stand, even chair, was there. 
The windows were of wire glass and guarded by 
metal screens, the lights were in shielded recesses, 
the floor was polished but without covering. No 
pictures, flowers, nor the dainty things which nor- 
mal women crave were to be seen. On the cot 
sat a woman, Marie Wentworth, sullen and defiant, 
a worse than failure, locked in this protected room 
of a special hospital. Isolated with her care- 
taker, she was watched day and night — watched 
to save her from successfully carrying out her 
determination of self-destruction, a determination 
which had found expression in more than words, 
for only the day before — the day of her admission 
— she had swallowed some cleverly hidden, 
antiseptic tablets. The trained habits of obser- 
vation of the skilful nurse had saved her from 
death. Crafty, vindictive, malicious, reckless, 
heartless! Her care demanded tireless watching 
— hence this room, void of anything by which she 
could possibly injure herself or others. Nor was 
she more attractive than her surroundings. Her 
skin was sallow and unwholesome; yellow-gray 
rings added dulness to her black eyes. Scrawny 

185 



186 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

of figure, hard and repelling of features, an atmos- 
phere of malevolence seemed to emanate from her 
presence. She took little note of what was hap- 
pening, though occasional, furtive glances gave 
intimation of her knowledge of the nurse's pres- 
ence. When stimulated to expression there were 
explosions of violent abuse, directed chiefly 
against her older sister, explosions punctuated by 
vicious flashes of profanity which left doubt in no 
mind of the hatred which rankled — -hatred of 
family, hatred of order and authority, hatred of 
goodness however expressed, hatred of life and 
damnations of the hereafter. An unholy picture 
she was of a demoralized soul in which smol- 
dered and from which flared forth a peace- 
destroying fire — the rebellion of a depraved body 
and mind against the moral self. She had been 
placed in this institution under legal restraint to 
be treated for morphinism, and, according to her 
brother, "pure cussedness. ,, 

How did it happen? The Wentworths lived 
well, very well indeed, in a bluegrass county-seat 
of fair Kentucky. The father was an attorney by 
profession, a horse-fancier by choice, and for years 
before Marie's birth relieved the monotony of 
office duties and race-track pleasures by vivid, 
gentlemanly ' ' sprees. ' ' Marie was only six when 
his last artery essential to the business of living 
became properly hardened, and Marie's mother 
was a widow. 

Mrs. Wentworth was to the manor born. She 
took pride in her home and thoroughly admired 
the brilliant qualities of her husband. Adorned 



THE BATTLE WITH SELF 187 

with old jewels and old lace, she regularly graced 
her table at the periodic big dinners it was her 
pride to give. In fact, her pride extended to the 
planning of three fine meals a day. An unsenti- 
mental science suggests that her husband's 
arteries, as well as her fatal cancer, might have 
been avoided had chronic proteid intoxication not 
been the result of her menus. She also took pride 
in her family and trained the two older children 
as well as she knew, instilling in them both a 
loyalty to certain ideals which evolved into moral- 
ity. But her failing health left Marie much to the 
care of her sister, and more to the tutelage of her 
own desires. Unhappily, there was little of 
beauty in the mother's last months which made 
any appeal to her child's love, or left much to in- 
spire a twelve-year-old girl's devotion when but 
memory was left. 

When the insurance was collected and all set- 
tlements made, the comfortable old home and the 
jewels sold, each of the three children had five 
thousand dollars. The brother's success was 
limited. He invested his all, together with many 
notes of promise payable to his senior partner, 
in a dry-goods business, and while he carried most 
of the details of the establishment, the everlasting 
interest on his notes, and his wife's love of and 
demand for fine feathers, kept ends from ever suc- 
cessfully meeting. 

The sister, the eldest, was fine. The illness and 
death of her parents laid grave responsibilities 
on her young life, and she met them seriously, 
wholesomely, constructively. She early proved 



188 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

herself capable of large sacrifices. She had 
finished her college course before her mother's 
death, and after the home was sold she secured a 
position in the local woman's college, where she 
continued to teach and to merit a growing respect 
for many years. She was not perfect ; the Went- 
worth temper flashed out most inopportunely, and 
work and pray and sacrifice and resolve as she 
would, her rule of Marie was unfortunate — flint 
and steel strike fire. Probably she "school- 
marmed" rather than mothered the child. 

But with all environment favorable, Marie 
would have proven a "proposition." The sport- 
ing blood and Bourbon high-balls of the father 
and the mother's love of the good things of life 
more than neutralized the latter 's Methodism. 
Marie was a healthy, well-built, lithe lassie, with 
raven-black hair and eyes which snapped equally 
with pleasure or with wrath. Impulsive, intense, 
wilful, tempestuous, bright and possessing ca- 
pacity, pleasure-loving and ever impatient of 
restraint, we see in her the highly developed 
nervous temperament. She feared nothing save 
the "horrible nightmares" which frequently fol- 
lowed the big dinners — a child who could have 
been led to Parnassus, but who was driven nearly 
to Hell! She went through the public schools 
without conscious effort, but her buxom figure, 
the rich flush of health, her vivacity, her bearing, 
were irresistible to the youth of the community, 
and a series of escapades culminated in her dis- 
missal from college ; her indiscretions cost her the 
respect of the one man she loved. At twenty she 



THE BATTLE WITH SELF 189 

had spent two thousand of the five thousand left 
her, while she and the sister failed to find harmony 
together. She had little sympathy with her 
sister's plodding life, but realized the need of pre- 
paring herself to earn, so entered a Cincinnati 
hospital. She had many qualities which made 
her a valuable student-nurse, with propensities 
which kept her in hot water. She had completed 
her second year of training when she was dis- 
missed. The internes could not resist her, nor she 
them, and only so many midnight lunches on duty 
can be winked at, even in a hospital needing 
nurses. For nearly a year she was spasmodically 
occupied as an experienced nurse. The end of 
this year found her one thousand dollars poorer, 
while her heritage was becoming more manifest. 
In the place of her father's periodic alcoholism, 
it was periodic headaches. She was thoroughly 
impatient of personal suffering, or of any hygienic 
restraint, and so took heavy doses of headache- 
powders and, if these did not relieve, opiates. 
By falsifying her record, she succeeded in enter- 
ing another training-school, a smaller one, in her 
own state. For a year she was careful — she was 
anxious to graduate — and developed real cunning 
in the use of drugs; but dependence upon these 
steadily undermined her reserve until she was al- 
most daily using something for the " tired feeling' ' 
which was now so chronic. Nearly two years had 
passed before her drug-taking habit was discov- 
ered. Prompt dismissal necessarily followed. 
Her sister was informed, and insisted upon her 
going to an institution to be cured. Five hun- 



190 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

dred dollars were spent, and three months of treat- 
ment, directed to the withdrawal of her drag, gave 
no insight into her need for seriously altering her 
habits of life and feeling, brought no least con- 
ception of her defects of character without change 
of which there could be, for her, no safe living. 

During the next ten years her physical and 
mental deterioration increased apace. Other 
courses of treatment were taken with no lasting 
benefit. Her misfortunes seemed to culminate 
when she voluntarily entered a "drug-cure" in- 
stitute which was practically a resort for drug- 
users. There are in every country unworthy 
places of this kind, where no real effort to cure 
patients is made. Sufferers with means are kept 
comfortable by being given drugs whenever they 
demand them, thus satisfying their consciences 
that they are being "treated," while vainly wait- 
ing till they are sufficiently strong to get entirely 
off "dope." In such a house of quackery Marie 
stayed two years. Her remaining fifteen hun- 
dred dollars and a thousand of her sister's went 
for fake treatment. She learned to smoke ciga- 
rettes with the young doctor; she played cards, 
gossiped, ate, slept and was never refused a com- 
forting dose whenever she couldn't "stand it a 
minute longer. 9 ' Worse than wasted years these, 
for even the remnants of her pride faded, and 
she lived a sordid life of the flesh. The sister, 
when she finally realized the gravity of the situa- 
tion, lost all hope whatever for any restoration 
and, acting under the advice of the old family 
physician, had her committed to the State Hos- 



THE BATTLE WITH SELF 191 

pital for the Insane as an incurable narco- 
maniac. Here she was rudely but promptly de- 
prived of all narcotics, nor by any hook nor crook, 
cunning though she was, could she secure a quiet- 
ing, solacing grain. The wise superintendent, 
believing that there was little chance for her true 
regeneration in the surroundings of even his best 
wards, advised that she be sent to a hospital 
where she would receive special care. The 
sister's funds alone could make this possible, and 
her genuine worth is shown in her willingness to 
spend a quarter of her entire savings that Marie 
might have this chance. Here, thirty-three years 
old, we found her the day after she had been trans- 
ferred, the day after she had vainly tried to carry 
out her vow to end things if she were ever ' l forced 
into another treatment.' * 

Throughout the years the primitive self had 
been pitted against her own soul. She had 
always rebelled at her misfortunes, though they 
were largely of her own making. She blamed 
others for her hardships, and through the in- 
tensity of her resentment but made things harder. 
Not the least expression of her depravity was her 
hatred for all who had interfered with her wilful 
desires, particularly the sister, whose sacrifice she 
ignored, but whom she took a malicious delight in 
proclaiming to be the one who had forever ruined 
her chances in life by committing her to an in- 
sane asylum. But her delight was malicious, and 
all that she got out of her hate and maligning was 
deeper misery. The bitter dregs of twenty years 
of soulless living were all the cup of life now held 



192 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

for her — all the more bitter because of the finer 
qualities of her nature. There were possibilities 
in this highly organized girl which could have 
led her into an unusual wholeness of living. 

Six months passed, months of sullen, dogged 
resistance — resistance to the returning health 
which was again rounding her form and glowing 
her cheeks, resistance to proffered kindnesses of 
fellow-patients and nurses, resistance to any ap- 
peal to pride, honor, ambition, right. Sick of 
soul, she abjured the interest of the hospital work- 
ers, the love of her sister whose weekly letters 
she left unopened, the wholesome atmosphere of 
her surroundings, the personal appeal of those 
whose hearts were heavy with desire to help. 

Then the miracle ! — for one came who cast out 
devils. She was not only a nurse, she was one 
of those divinely human beings who, with a nurse 's 
knowledge and training, attain practical saint- 
hood. She, too, had frequently been repelled in 
her hours of contact with this unhappy creature, 
but she believed that under all this unholiness 
there was a soul. She was a busy, hard-worked 
nurse, but in time Marie became aware that she 
was spending part of her limited off-duty hours 
to minister to her, that she had requested a special 
assignment of duty which would throw them to- 
gether. Marie 's four years of training made her 
recognize the rareness of this giving. Curiosity 
at least was aroused, and she began asking per- 
sonal questions. An unconscious self-pity im- 
pelled her to discuss the grievances of the life 
of nursing, the unfairness common in training- 



THE BATTLE WITH SELF 193 

schools, the injustices of long hours and in- 
adequate appreciation, with scores of other quar- 
rels which she had with life. Each of these was 
met squarely by her nurse-friend, who, free from 
platitudes and cant, ever saw the ideal above it 
all, who, loving her profession and loving human- 
ity and promised to a life of service, gently, 
beautifully, firmly stood by her principles. For 
three months they were in daily contact — three 
thankless months for the nurse, three months of 
cunning, evil-minded, suspicious testing by the 
patient. Finally the very goodness of her friend 
seemed intolerable, and a paroxysm of rage and 
resentment broke loose, in which she cursed and 
abused her helper beyond sufferance. The nurse 
suddenly grasped the unhappy woman's arms to 
shake some sense of decency into her warped 
nature, one would have thought, but in truth that 
eye might meet eye, and in this look the rare 
love, which can persist through such provocation, 
awakened a soul. That look was at once the reve- 
lation of the worth of the one and the worthless- 
ness of the other. A flood of tears drowned, it 
would seem forever, the evil which was cursing. 
In a day, in an hour, the change was wrought, that 
miraculous change which enters every life when 
the soul comes into its own. 

There were months in which the battle of self 
ebbed and flowed, but never did defeat seem again 
imminent, and the final victory was found in a 
high resolve which took her back home a quiet, 
subdued woman, forgetful of self in her sense 
of debt to the sister whose goodness she had never 



194 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

before admitted. For years they lived together, 
she keeping the simple home and keeping it well, 
saving, industrious, devoted^ even loving. She 
has largely avoided publicity, though always 
ready to nurse in emergencies. Nobly she is 
expiating the past, and has long since worthily 
won the " well-done' ' of her moral self. 



CHAPTEE XIX 
THE SUFFERING OF SELF-PITY 

Alac MacEeady was not much of an oarsman. 
Big and strong, and heretofore so successful that 
his large self-confidence had never been badly 
jolted, he was quite at a disadvantage, this June 
afternoon, as he attempted to row pretty Annette 
Neil across the head of the lake to where she said 
the fishing was good. Twice already he had 
splashed her dainty, starched frock, ironed, he 
knew, in the highest perfection of the art, by her 
own active, shapely, brown hands. And each 
awkward splashing had been followed by flashing 
glances which shriveled self-esteem even as they 
fascinated. They had planned to spend the sun- 
set hour fishing, then land in time to meet the 
crowd and be driven on to Border City to a 
neighboring dance, and all come back to Geneva 
together. 

Alac's rural North-England training had de- 
veloped in him many qualifications of worth but, 
among these, boating was not one. Had he told 
the truth when this little trip was planned, he 
would have admitted that he had never rowed 
a boat a half-mile in his life. Annette could do 
it tip-top; why not he? But things were un- 
questionably perverse. The boat wouldn't go in 

195 



196 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

a straight line — in fact, it didn't go very fast any- 
way. The black eyes before him framed by that 
impudently beautiful face, so pert, so naive, so 
understandingly aware — so "damned handsome" 
he said to himself, prodded him to redoubled 
effort. He was swinging his two hundred pounds 
lustily, unevenly — an unusually vicious jerk, and 
snap went the old oar! Off the seat he tumbled, 
and, with land-lubber's luck, unshipped the other 
oar and away it floated, and a mile from land, 
they drifted. 

Alac MacEeady was Scotch-English. The fam- 
ily had executed a number of important con- 
tracts for the British government; one of these 
had brought two of the boys to Canada. With 
their family backing, they had undertaken some 
constructive work in northern New York, and, at 
this time, were building a railroad which passed 
through Geneva. Alac had been in the neighbor- 
hood for two months supervising operations. 
He was striking in appearance — a florid-faced 
blonde, brusque in business, quite jovial socially, 
and cracking-full of the conceit of youth, wealth 
and station. So far, life had, in practically noth- 
ing, refused his bidding. 

Annette Neil's father kept a small store, 
Annette did much of the clerking. She was un- 
questionably the prettiest girl in Geneva; indeed 
she was as pretty as girls are made. With all 
her small-town limitations she was bright as 
a pin, and as sharp; fine of instinct and, withal, 
coy as a coquette. The first time Alac addressed 
her it was as a shop-keeper. Something she said 



THE SUFFERING OF SELF-PITY 197 

kept turning over in his brain and he realized next 
morning, as he was shaving, that her reply had 
been impertinent. Piqued, he returned the day 
after to make another purchase, and made the 
greater mistake of being patronizing. Mr. Alae 
MacEeady discovered, without any prolonged 
period of rumination, that he had a bee in his 
bonnet, and left the little shop semispeechless 
and irate. He was not satisfied to leave the 
honors with this "snip of an American girl," and 
evolved a plan of verbal assault which was to 
bring the provincial upstart to her senses, only 
to discover that she had a dozen defenses for each 
attack, and to find himself, for two consecutive, 
disconcerting minutes, wondering if perchance he 
might be a "boob." With each visit — and they 
were almost daily and many of them made in the 
face of strong, contrary resolution — he felt the dis- 
tinction in their stations disappearing. He 
later found himself calling on Annette's mother, 
and, stiffly at first, later humbly asking for the 
company of the bewitching girl, who, coy witch 
that she was, steadfastly refused to be "com- 
pany" even when her mother said she might. 
This trip across the lake was the first real con- 
cession the little minx had made — and how 
"bloomingly" he "messed it up"! He was not 
used to the water, and, oarless, became "panicky." 
A pair of ridiculing eyes caused him to break off 
his second bellow for help, in its midst. 

The little boat drifted slowly. The June breeze 
was not strong. The sun slipped behind radiant 
clouds, clouds which shifted and softened, and 



198 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

tinted and toned through the pastels into the 
neutrals. Gently they were nearing the shore 
when the great, golden moon rose in the east, and 
soon brightening, shimmered the lake with count- 
less, dancing splotches of silver. The water 
lapped with ceaseless, dainty caresses the sides of 
the boat. Some mother-bird nestling near the 
water's edge crooned her good-night message to 
her mate. A halo surrounded and softened the 
white face so near and, as part of the evening 
symphony, two dark eyes rested upon his face, 
deeply luminous. There are different stories of 
what he said. He admitted he was never so 
awkward. But they missed their companions, 
and the dance, and walked all the way 'round the 
head of the lake, home, this proud son of near- 
nobility doing obeisance to his untutored queen. 
So Alac and Annette married. They traveled 
far, first to Canada, then to England. Annette's 
sheer beauty and remarkable taste in the use of 
Alac's prodigal gifts of clothing and jewels car- 
ried the badly disturbed and certainly unfavorably 
prejudiced MacEeady family by assault. Ten 
years they lived in the big Northumberland home. 
A boy and a girl came, both blondes like their 
father. The MacEeady boys were not meeting 
the same success in their contracting ventures 
for which two former generations had been noted. 
And, after their father's death, one particularly 
disastrous contract quite reduced the family's 
financial standing and consequent importance. 
The three brothers could not agree as to which 
was to blame, so Alac and his family returned to 



THE SUFFERING OF SELF-PITY 199 

America and located in Bochester. Their few 
thousands Alac invested in a small manufactur- 
ing concern which never prospered sufficiently to 
maintain him in his life-long habits of good living. 
Unhappily, too, strong as Alac was in many ways, 
his one weakness grew. Three or four times a 
year he would make trips to Toronto or New York, 
drink gloriously, spend hundreds of dollars, and 
return home meek and dutiful, almost praying 
Annette not to say what he knew was in her mind. 
Of the two children, little Alac multiplied his 
father 's weaknesses by an unhappily large factor. 
He never amounted to much, developing little but 
small bombast. Charlotte was the child, dutiful, 
studious, rather serious perhaps, but very con- 
scientious. Her features were those of neither 
father nor mother, but peculiarly delicate, strik- 
ingly refined. When she was fifteen her father 
was found dead, one morning, in an obscure hotel 
in the Middle West. He had neglected his in- 
surance premiums. The resourceful little widow 
went to work at once. The products of her needle 
were exquisite. She sold some of the handsome 
old furniture and, during the next five years, most 
of her jewels went to keep the children in school. 
She had given absolutely to her husband and to 
her home, and through the years to come her 
cheer was never bedimmed save when the hus- 
band was mentioned. Charlotte became more at- 
tractive. She was slender, fair — the English type 
was apparent; she was a distinct contrast to her 
highly colored, brunette mother, who, however, 
might have been but an older sister, she had so 



200 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

preserved her youth. Charlotte was periodically 
morbid, a transmuted heritage. The financial 
need directed her training into practical lines ; she 
studied stenography and was fortunate in secur- 
ing a position in the office of John Evanson, the 
energetic senior member of a growing leather- 
manufacturing firm. There was something poet- 
ically appealing to this busy man in the quiet, 
sometimes sad-faced, fine-faced, competent 
woman, which gradually created in him a hunger- 
ing sense of need — and he called one night. He 
afterwards said if he hadn't married Charlotte, 
he would have married her mother, who, to tell 
the truth, put what sparkle there was into the 
courtship. 

Charlotte's cup of happiness should have been 
overflowing when she moved into the handsome, 
big house. Her mother was to live with them, 
and such a mother-in-law would be a welcome 
asset to any home. Mr. Evanson gave Alac 
Junior the only good position he ever had — a posi- 
tion which he never filled to any one 's satisfac- 
tion but his own. For two years Charlotte's 
virtues were expressed in quiet, almost thought- 
ful home-devotion, entertainment of poor rela- 
tives, and church-work. John Evanson was 
simple and rational in his tastes. In business he 
was enterprising and a keen fighter of competi- 
tion. He cleverly managed his interests, which 
had grown through years of steadfast attention. 
He was nearly forty when he married, and his 
new home was to him a haven. The mother 
adapted herself superbly and was a real joy in 



THE SUFFERING OF SELF-PITY 201 

the household through her wit and daintiness and 
ingenious thoughtfulness. 

Charlotte was not well for several months be- 
fore the birth of the much-wished-f or baby, which 
unhappily never breathed. A sharp illness which 
lingered was followed by eight miserable months, 
then an operation, and the surgeon pronounced 
her well — but she could not believe she was. 
Two years of rather unassuming semi-invalidism 
passed. She made few complaints; she was evi- 
dently repressing expression of the recurring 
symptoms of her discomfort. But since her 
baby's death she had recovered little ability for 
effort. She tired quickly. She was living a life 
of quiet, sheltered, almost luxurious inadequacy. 
Dr. Corning was puzzled. Mrs. Evanson had ap- 
pealed to his professional pride and sympathetic 
nature strongly. Was there something obscure, 
a lurking condition which he had overlooked? 
He would have his work reviewed by the cele- 
brated New York internist. Nothing was found 
which resulted helpfully. Mrs. MacEeady was 
patient. Her innate good judgment withheld dis- 
cussion of details with her unhappy daughter. 
She believed Charlotte to be secretly mourning 
for the little one who had not lived. She spent 
hours with her son-in-law in anxious conference. 
What could get her poor child out of this almost 
apathy? She looked so well; she had never 
weighed so much; but twice she had been found 
looking over the baby's things. Was her sorrow 
eating away at her heart? Hadn't he noticed 
that for months she left the room when her father 



202 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

or the baby was mentioned? And hadn't he 
noticed the marks of tears when she came back? 
The husband had never loved his wife more; he 
pitied her ; he yearned to share the burden which 
she did not mention. He watched the change in 
her moods and brought something new each day 
to please, divert, to interest — books and flowers, 
periodicals, clothing, jewelry. Pets proved tire- 
some. She wearied soon on every attempted trip. 
Concerts and the theater, and music in the home, 
all made her "nervous." 

Mrs. MacEeady firmly believed the trouble was 
a haunting spirit of unsatisfied mother-love, and 
suggested bringing a child into the home. This 
plan did arouse new interest. Months were spent 
in making the selection. Scores of points must 
be satisfactorily fulfilled, or the plan would prove 
but a bitter disappointment. At last, a nine- 
months-old girl-baby was discovered who promised 
to resemble her foster-mother, and who had a 
"respectable heritage 'way back on both sides." 
It seemed most fortunate for both the little 
orphan and the hungering woman — this adoption. 
Charlotte spent much time in getting the little one 
outfitted and settled. The child brought new 
problems, such as worthy nursemaids, sleep-hours 
and safe feeding — and Charlotte was better. 

Mrs. MacEeady had not been looking well. 
For months she had been slowly losing weight, 
although there had been not a syllable of com- 
plaint. Mr. Evanson finally insisted — the exami- 
nation revealed an incurable condition — presto! 
Charlotte was prostrated. The trained nurse, se- 



THE SUFFEEING OF SELF-PITY 203 

cured for the mother, spent most of her time at- 
tending the multiplying needs of the daughter, 
whose apprehension grew until she began send- 
ing for her husband during his office-hours, fear- 
ing that her mother was worse; or because she 
looked as if she might have one of the hemorrhages 
the doctor feared, or to discuss what they would 
do when her mother died. The months dragged 
on. The splendid mother radiated cheer to the 
last. Then began the reign of terror. Stimulants 
and sedatives seemed necessary to protect Char- 
lotte from "collapse." For a month, Mr. Evan- 
son did not go near the office; for years, he was 
subject to calls by day, was disturbed mercilessly 
at night. No nurse could fill his place. It 
seemed chiefly the sick woman's " heart.' ' Dr. 
Corning was too frank — Charlotte insisted he did 
not "understand." Dr. Winton was "sympa- 
thetic." He was physician for many society 
women. He was an adept in providing under- 
standing and comfort. He never advised "dan- 
gerous operations or nasty mixtures," and was no 
fanatic on diet and exercise. 

When Charlotte married, she was "lily-fair," 
and weighed one hundred and sixteen. Five 
years after her mother's death she was florid, 
vapid, and weighed one hundred and sixty-eight 
miserable pounds. She ran the gamut of nerv- 
ous ailments: disturbances of circulation, diges- 
tion, breathing, eating, sleeping, antagonism to 
draughts and noises, and a special antipathy to 
the odor from the exhaust of motor-cars. This 
last made her faint, and of her fainting attacks 



204 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

pages might be written. The home of John Evan- 
son was now a dreary place. It was a household 
subsidized to the whims of a self -pitying woman. 
Her loss of father, baby and mother had "wrecked 
her life." Husband, child, nurse, servants, were 
all under the blight of her enslaving self-commis- 
eration. For years all church and social activities 
were unattempted. Eelatives and friends could 
not be entertained, for every one's attention was 
demanded to meet the varying possible emergen- 
cies of symptoms and to keep her mind from 
dwelling on her losses and the wretchedness of 
her fate. 

Mr. Evanson's business interests were neg- 
lected. His devotion to his morbid, now thor- 
oughly selfish wife lost him big opportunities. 
His nerves, too, suffered from the unceasing 
strain. Serious-minded, nonimaginative, honest, 
it never occurred to him that the illness of his 
"poor afflicted wife" was an illness of the soul 
only. The adopted daughter was surrounded by 
an atmosphere of unnatural repression, an atmos- 
phere charged with false sympathy and unwhole- 
some concessions to the selfish weaknesses of her 
foster-mother. Dr. Winton advised many com- 
fortable and diverting variations in treatment, 
but life in the Evanson home became increasingly 
distorted. At last John realized he was losing 
out badly — he must have a change. Through 
some subconscious inspiration he took Dr. Winton 
with him. They spent two weeks hunting and 
fishing in the Maine woods. John sought to get 
in touch with the man behind the doctor. The 



THE SUFFERING OF SELF-PITY 205 

doctor soon realized the manliness of his com- 
panion. They were resting after a taxing 
portage, both feeling the fine exhilaration of per- 
fect physical relaxation after productive physical 
weariness. The two men were pretty close. 
Shop had not been mentioned during the two 
weeks. 

t ' Doctor, tell me about my wife, just as though 
she were a sister.' ' 

The doctor mused several minutes. "It is not 
pleasant ... it is not easy to tell . . . you won't 
want to hear it. You probably will not accept 
what I have to say . . . you may resent it. ' ' 

"Tell me straight; you know how vitally I and 
my household need to understand the truth." 

Gravely the physician spoke — as friend to 
friend : ' ' Your wife has leprosy ! — not the physi- 
cal form, but the kind that anesthetizes, ulcerates, 
deforms the soul — the leprosy of self-pity. It 
began with her father's death. It has eaten 
deeper and deeper, fed by the unselfishness of 
her mother and of yourself, unchecked by the 
soothing salves applied by doctors like me. I 
early recognized that she would not pay the price 
of radical cure — the price of effortful living. 
Her understanding soul ha-s degenerated — some- 
thing vital to Christ-like living is, I believe, lost. 
She believes her undiseased body to be ill. Her 
reason is distorted by her disease-obsessions ; her 
will has been pampered into a selfish caricature. 
She has accepted the false counsel of her selfish- 
ness so long that she is attracted by error, and 
repelled by truth. I see relief for her only 



206 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

through the culminating self-deception that dis- 
ease does not exist. If this error is accepted by 
her, she will become as fanatically superior to her 
wretched sensations as she is now subservient to 
them. In other words, she is a worse than useless 
woman whom Christian Science may transform. 
She is emotionally sick. Christian Science ap- 
peals to the emotional life; it is not concerned 
with reason — no more is she. It negates physical 
illness and thus might replace her morbid, hope- 
less, selfish sufferings with years of applied, 
wholesome cheer and faith. ' ' 

Some details were discussed. A fine personal- 
ity, a woman who devoutly accepted the teachings 
of Mrs. Eddy, who would have been an example 
of selfless living, regardless of details of religious 
faith, was interested in poor Charlotte. Progress 
was slow at first. Then the leaven began to work. 
One day the expressman moved a big box from 
the Evanson home to a local hospital. It con- 
tained the paraphernalia of a one-time invalid. 
One plastic nurse lost a chronic case. To-day in 
the Evanson household, all discussions of illness 
are under the ban. The home is no longer a pri- 
vate infirmary, but breathes a bit of the after-glow 
of cheer which should linger long after the passing 
of one so worthy and radiant as Annette — the 
mother beautiful in body and spirit. 



CHAPTER XX 
THE SLAVE OF CONSCIENCE 

In the following life-story, our sympathies are 
strongly drawn to the conscientious woman who 
gave so many years of uncomplaining service — 
a giving which should have brought its daily re- 
ward of satisfaction; yet she sorrowed through 
her youth because she lacked the charity that 
"suffereth long and is kind," finding which, her 
problem was met. 

The never too attractive Yarnell home was in 
a mess. Irene, the eight-year-old child, seemed 
seriously ill. The doctor had said, the night be- 
fore, that they might have to operate if the pain 
in her side didn't get better; and the little girl 
prayed that they would, and prayed specially that 
she would die while they were doing it. She 
didn't want to live. She wanted to go rather than 
to stay forever with the new mother her father 
had brought home last month. Big Sister 
wouldn't stay; she ran away the second week and 
married Tim Shelby, and had a good home now 
with Tim's people — even though her father 
hadn't spoken to the Shelbys for years. Aunt 
Effie had gone too, dear Aunt Erne, her mother's 
sister, who had been mother to her ever since her 
real mother died — just after she was born — that 

207 



208 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

precious mother, who, Aunt Effie used to tell her, 
had died happy that her little girl might live. 
Aunt Effie had always taught her a beautiful love, 
and every night she said a beautiful prayer for 
the mother she had never seen. Aunt Effie tried 
to stay, too, but couldn't. She left the same day 
the new mother asked father, before them all, 
how he was ever going to keep up with all the 
expenses of so many and give a tenth of his salary 
to the church. 

The very night her aunt went away, the step- 
mother had told Irene that it was wicked to "do 
up" her hair in curl-papers, and when she 
begged her, "Just this once," because she had a 
"piece to speak" in school next day, and cried 
in her disappointment, her stepmother had shaken 
her so hard that something seemed to tear loose in 
her side. Irene had never hated any one before 
— and it was wicked to hate ; and so she was pray- 
ing her real mother to come and take her before 
she became a sinner. But in spite of her prayers, 
she shrank when her stepmother came near and 
chilled whenever touched by her. She couldn't 
eat the food she brought, and every time she 
thought of her, the pain was worse. Both her 
father and his new wife seemed so strange. She 
felt like some stray, hurt animal, not loved by 
any one. 

The new Mrs. Yarnell had been a maiden-lady 
many years. During her spinstership she had 
given herself without stint to the activities of her 
small church, a church belonging to an obscure 
denomination which teaches that holiness is nigh 









THE SLAVE OF CONSCIENCE 209 

upon us; that if we but supplement conver- 
sion by a second act of grace, sanctification here 
and forevermore is ours. Hers was not an easy 
disposition to live with. She had ably held her 
own through years of bickerings and wordy con- 
tentions with an overworked, irritable mother. 
She gave little love. She received little. But 
her underdeveloped, souring heart instinctively 
craved some drops of sweetness. So, when she 
listened to the fervid exhorter, revealing the new 
highway to heaven, that glorious way where the 
good Lord carries all our burdens, if we will just 
cast them upon Him, a great light illumined 
her soul. Why a weary life of strife and mis- 
understanding! She would give herself without 
reserve, and even in the giving she could feel her 
burden roll away. In a flash it seemed, life 
had changed. She was now the Lord's — mind, 
soul and body. He directed; she followed. He 
could not lead her wrong, and, as all her impulses 
and desires were now divine, she could do no 
wrong. She could think no wrong. Having 
given all, she was now saved to the uttermost. 
Misunderstood she must be, of course, by those 
who knew not the holy leadings of her sancti- 
fied soul. Serenely, supremely, she lived. Her 
old biting temper was now righteous indignation. 
Her dislike for household work was only an 
evidence that, like beautiful Mary, she had chosen 
the better part. What her mother had always 
called obstinacy and perversity were now stead- 
fastness in the Lord. Oddly, her tart, sarcastic, 
even flaying tongue was not softened by any 



210 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

gentleness of divine inspiration. Incidentally, 
the Lord had given her a plump figure, and a 
knack of apparel which had long appealed to 
Widower Yarnell's eye. And the Lord approved; 
in truth He said "Yes!" so audibly that Miss 
Spinster hesitated but one maidenly minute. 

Mrs. Yarnell's sanctification washed dishes, 
kept house, and nursed lonely, sick, little children 
most inefficiently. So, after Aunt Effie and Big 
Sister, both willing workers, left, the new bride 
found unforeseen difficulties in following the 
Lord's leadings, which seemed to call to real 
back-and-muscle taxing effort for other people — 
such was for the world of Marthas. So things in 
the Yarnell household got in a mess. 

It seemed hard for Irene to recover. But her 
returning strength found early tonic in the house- 
work which was left for her to do. The new 
mother's church activities occupied so much of 
her time that little was left for any but unavoid- 
able essentials. Irene became a fine little worker, 
and should have had all the honors and happi- 
ness due the model child. Neat, rapid, effective, 
an excellent student, she developed physically 
strong, the possessor of that rare and attractive 
glow of health, into a thoroughly wholesome 
looking young woman. Deep within, however, 
she had not known peace since the day Aunt Effie 
left. For years she had fought smoldering re- 
sentment and an embittering sense of injustice, 
until at fourteen the deeper depths were stirred 
by a slow but irresistible religious awakening. 
Her stepmother 's church was on the opposite side 



THE SLAVE OF CONSCIENCE 211 

of town, too far for them both to attend. Her 
own mother's church was in the neighborhood, 
and throughout the years she had usually been 
able to attend Sunday-school there and be home 
again in time to get dinner. Her young under- 
standing had long been in a turmoil as to what 
religion and right are. Aunt Effie had taught 
gentleness of conduct and charity of speech, and 
f orgetfulness of self in service. Mrs. Yarnell con- 
stantly proclaimed that, until the Lord entered her 
heart to absolutely sanctify it, she was certain to 
be miserable, unless she became a hopelessly hard- 
ened sinner. 

Unhappy the child surely was. Her conscience 
was a sensitive one; it seemed ever to chide, and 
often to condemn. No matter how faithfully she 
followed duty, her failure to receive that wonder- 
working "second blessing' ' left her feeling as an 
unworthy one outside of the fold. Then, when 
she neglected, even for an hour, her household 
duties or school-work for church-socials or class- 
picnics, her conscience, and usually her step- 
mother, pounced upon her mercilessly. At early 
fourteen, she was feeling the chilling shadows 
of a morbid conscience. Her stepmother was 
away for two weeks attending a denominational 
conference, and it seemed to Irene that she had 
more time than usual ; so she talked her perplexi- 
ties over with the pastor of her mother's church. 
A good man he was, but far from being an expert 
physician of the soul. He did not seem to sense 
her deeper problem — the one daily hurting her 
sensitive spirit, but asked a number of questions, 



212 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

her answers to which convinced him that she was 
entirely ready to join the church, which he 
definitely advised her to do, believing thereby 
she wonld find the peace she sought. So with- 
out delay, even before her stepmother's return, 
and without consulting her, she followed the 
minister's advice. Unhappily, her business- 
burdened father had no special interest in the wel- 
fare of any one's soul. 

Mrs. Yarnell henceforth treated Irene as a 
religious inferior. High school brought more 
work and little play. The unsuccessful father 
died with bad arteries when Irene was eighteen. 
He left little beside the mortgaged place ; so Irene 
took up bookkeeping, and before she was twenty 
had a bank-position which, through her ability 
and merit and trustworthy conscientiousness, she 
has held through the years and the vicissitudes, 
supporting herself and her stepmother. Irene's 
play days had been rare. Her conscience was a 
grim-visaged angel whose flaming sword she ever 
saw barring each path to pleasure. 

The president of her bank was also an elder 
in her church. His mind was pretty well filled 
with business, still he took occasional thought for 
his employees, and the summer Irene was twenty- 
three, he asked her how she would spend her two 
vacation weeks. "No," she was not going to 
leave Wheeling. "Yes," it was hot, but she had 
much sewing to do, and if she could save for two 
years more, the mortgage would be paid. The 
banker noticed, even as they talked, the slight 
tremor of fingers and lips which bespeaks tension ; 



THE SLAVE OF CONSCIENCE 213 

and that not a little of her appearance of reserve 
and strength had slipped away through the grind 
of the years. 

Three delegates were to be sent to the Chau- 
tauqua Assembly for a two weeks' special confer- 
ence, and somehow it turned out that, with those of 
Mrs. Crumb, the pastor's wife, and Matthew 
Keynolds, a theologic student the church was 
helping educate, Irene Yarnell's name was 
read. Two weeks at Chautauqua, her railway- 
fare paid both ways! — a score of the best 
people of the church assuring her that it was her 
duty — and an envelope with the banker's personal 
check for twenty dollars, endorsed "for in- 
cidentals as delegate"! Thus Irene set forth on 
her first foreign mission, her first trip out into 
this big, busy world, about which she had, wrong- 
fully, of course, wasted a few minutes now and 
then in dreaming. Who could have been more 
companionable than Matthew, or who more 
thoughtful and self-eliminating than Mrs. Crumb 
whose thrifty, matronly heart early sensed the 
promise and wisdom — and excitement, too, of a 
romance en route. And dear Mrs. Crumb was 
deft, and Matthew supremely susceptible, and 
Irene — she was in the clouds ! How like a story- 
book, the kind that ends happily, it would have 
worked out, if alas ! Matthew had not been quite 
so susceptible. There was a Pittsburg girl who 
had the advantage of prior association and, un- 
fortunately, the young student's pledge of 
eternal devotion. Still, Irene was a mighty good- 
looking girl; in fact, Matthew admitted, the third 



214 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

day of their trip, when her fine color began to 
flash back, that she was better looking than his 
promised, and so refreshingly free from worldly- 
mindedness. Mrs. Crumb did not know of 
Matthew's entanglements, while the devotion of 
his attentions, a certain lighting of his eyes, and 
gentleness of speech and demeanor convinced her 
that all she wished was going very well. So con- 
vinced was she that she made bold, early the 
second week, to express her belief in Irene's 
almost unequaled qualifications for a minister's 
wife, to which dutiful Matthew gave unreserved 
assent. 

Nothing of importance was scheduled for 
Wednesday afternoon, and Mrs. Crumb showed 
that she was not lacking in an understanding of 
young folks' human nature when she planned the 
little excursion which was to offer ample op- 
portunity for the consummation she believed so 
impending. They had all taken some tramps to- 
gether. She was not quite equal, she said, to the 
walk around to Mayfield, but it would make a fine 
afternoon trip for the young folks. She would 
go down on the steamer, and they could all come 
back and enjoy the refreshing, evening water- 
trip together. 

Matthew had certainly been attentive, giving 
an attention which Irene had never before re- 
ceived. For days she had been happy, the first 
joy-days she had known since she was eight. 
The very near future loomed large with intoxi- 
cating promise. Mrs. Crumb had talked to her, 
also, of Matthew, and of his fine record at col- 



THE SLAVE OF CONSCIENCE 215 

lege, and of his gentle nature. The early after- 
noon was hot; they walked slowly; they loitered 
when they came to shade. Then out of the west 
came booming black clouds, and they were caught 
in a mid-summer thunderstorm. He helped her as 
they ran for shelter, but, almost blinded 
by the pelting rain, she tripped and fell 
awkwardly, twisting her ankle cruelly. She prob- 
ably fainted. Matthew was frightened, and in his 
helplessness lost his head. She was roused by 
him chafing her hands, and his importunate l ' Dear 
Irene,' ' bundled stunned senses, soaked, chilling 
apparel and stabbing ankle into one unutterable 
confusion of unspeakable joy. And "devil-in- 
spired fool" that she was, she reached up, drew 
his tense face, so near, against hers, and "hate- 
ful bliss,' ' it stayed there a full minute. Then 
life went black, for he tore himself away, almost 
savagely putting her arm aside. "It is wrong; 
you have made me sin ! ' ' 

"It is wrong; you have made me sin!" were 
burned in loathsome black across the face of her 
conscience, accusing cruelly, unendingly accusing. 
Years passed — those years that drag, and she 
never knew of the girl in Pittsburg. She did not 
know other than that she had transgressed and 
tempted a fine, good man; that she had tempted 
him from the sanctity of great religious purpose 
— and her branded, sick conscience proved itself a 
poison to mind and body. 

Dazed, the hurt woman returned to the love- 
less home. Mechanically, for months, her hands 
made that home comfortable and toiled on at the 



216 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

bank. We wonder how the break could have been 
held back so long, in one so sensitive. The 
staunch body and well-trained mind must have 
carried her on through mere momentum. But it 
had to come. Self-condemnation and self-de- 
preciation gave birth to false self-accusation. 
She began to question the worth of all she did. 
Bepeatedly she must add and readd a column of 
figures; even the evidence of the adding-machine 
had to be proven. She wakened at night ques- 
tioning the correctness of her entries, and her 
work became slow and inaccurate. All she did, 
physically and mentally, became a dread. The 
very act of walking to and from the bank seemed 
to drain her waning strength. She refused a 
vacation suggested by her employer, who gradu- 
ally became genuinely concerned about her health. 
He knew but little of the affair at Chautauqua. 
Mrs. Crumb was too good a woman to let drop 
any hint of what she may have surmised; she 
actually knew only of the storm and sprained 
ankle. 

One morning Mrs. Yarnell called a neighboring 
doctor. She couldn't waken Irene. It was found 
that her sleep had become so poor that she had 
bought some powders from the druggist. Never 
having taken medicine, she was easily influenced, 
and the ordinary dose left her confused for 
twenty-four hours. Two weeks' rest at home, if 
one could rest in Mrs. Yarnell 's company, found 
the girl no stronger. The banker and the doctor 
had a conference. She must be gotten away from 
home. The banker had a doctor-friend, a man 



THE SLAVE OF CONSCIENCE 217 

whose means made it unnecessary for him to give 
his years of strength to the unceasing demands 
of a general practice. He had long been keenly 
interested in the complicated and growing prob- 
lem of nervousness. He owned a beautiful place 
down the Ohio River where, for years, he had been 
taking into his home a few deserving, nervous 
invalids. He had learned to enter into their lives 
with a specialist's skill — with a father's under- 
standing. Thus he gave largely — to some it would 
seem, of his substance, but the true giving was 
his discerning, constructive comprehension of 
human problems. Into this atmosphere, God and 
the banker sent Irene. 

For nearly twenty years this oversensitive girl 
had known few hours of understanding and 
sympathy. For a week or two she merely rested ; 
then one evening, it seemed precipitate, but some 
way it was as easy as anything she had ever done, 
she told the story we have heard. There, re- 
vealed, was the defect of a life, a problem to be 
worked out by this analytic student of mankind. 
Was it to introduce a little saving recklessness, 
the redeeming truth of honesty and justice to self, 
or the neutralizing of self -negation by the accept- 
ance of merited worth? Even through our weak- 
nesses are we sometimes healed. If any reason 
existed which could merit one self-accusing 
thought, the doctor found it when he uncovered 
the resentment which had never healed toward the 
usurping stepmother — ' ' a woman who had proved 
her limitations and should be mercifully judged 
thereby/' he told Irene. 



218 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

"Yes," the doctor said, "you have missed the 
'second blessing'; you have missed a thousand 
blessings because the generosity of your years of 
fine doing were lacking in the gentleness of feel- 
ing which Aunt Effie taught you, and which made 
your mother so beloved. Lacking this, even in the 
fulness of your much giving, you have failed. 
You have been seeking the true religion. Your 
mother had it — the kind that lightens the dead 
heaviness and puts heaven's color into the dull, 
dark hours at home. Herein, only, have you 
fallen short." 

The doctor knew men, and he was able to 
show her how utterly innocent she was of the 
slightest hint of wrong in her relations with Mat- 
thew, how impossible that her spontaneous act 
could have wrought a second's harm to any good 
man. There was much more said helpfully, but 
the most good, unquestionably, came from the un- 
spoken influence of the thoughtful personal con- 
sideration and discerning kindness of this scien- 
tific lover of his kind. Three months Irene spent 
with them, the doctor and his equally good wife; 
she returned home radiant. 

The years pass. During the Great War, when 
trained men were scarce, our restituted woman 
acted as cashier and drew almost a cashier's 
salary. The mortgage is paid. Two women live 
in the little house. The older is very religious. 
She still attends many church services; she duti- 
fully gives her tenth to the cause, and, in and 
out of season, proclaims her way as the perfect 
road to the heights beyond. Old and practically 



THE SLAVE OF CONSCIENCE 219 

unchangeable, she is not lovable and she never has 
been, but near-by tenderness has softened some 
of her self-satisfied asperities. Still radiant is 
the younger woman — the righteous woman whose 
righteousness has put unfailing cheer in service 
most of us would call " fierce,' ' a righteousness 
which has learned to be charitably blind where 
most of us would see and resent, a righteousness 
which has brought abiding happiness to a life that 
had long suffered, a slave to its conscience. 
Cleverness and wealth — having not charity — have 
sought such happiness in vain through the ages. 



CHAPTEE XXI 
CATASTROPHE CREATING CHARACTER 

Grandfather Scott was a blacksmith. He was 
much more — a natural amateur mechanic — the 
only man in those early days in the little 
town of Warren, who could successfully tinker 
sewing-machines, repair clocks, or make a 
new casting for a broken Franklin heater. He 
was a hale, ruddy man who lived, worked and 
died with much peace. There were girls, but 
David was the only boy, and a lusty youth he was. 
The absence of brothers, or possibly an excess of 
sisters, gave him, both as youth and young man, 
much more liberty of action and right of way 
than was good for his soul. At any rate, he early 
developed a steadfastness which, throughout his 
life, stood for both strength of purpose and hard- 
headed, sometimes hard-hearted wilfulness. His 
father had dreamed a dream: his smithy was to 
grow into a shop, and later the shop was to be- 
come a factory where a hundred men would do 
his bidding and supply the country with products 
of his inventive genius. But so far as his own 
life was to realize, it remained a dream. The 
shop was never built ; the genius failed to invent. 
But his son, David! Yes, he would have the 

schooling and advantages that the father had not 

220 



CATASTROPHE CREATING CHARACTER 221 

known. And so it was : at thirty, David Scott had 
been well educated in mechanics ; at forty, he had 
made improvements on the sewing-machine, which 
gave him valuable patents ; at fifty, his factory em- 
ployed ten times the number his father had 
visioned. Thus was fulfilled the dream of the 
ancestor. 

Business success was large for Mr. David 
Scott. But what of his success as a father? He 
married at twenty-eight, a handsome woman 
whose pride in appearance stood out through the 
years and influenced the training given her three 
children. Little David, or "Dave," as he was 
early called in distinction to his father, was petted 
by his mother and, in spite of evidences to the 
contrary, was his father's pride. The family 
moved to Cleveland when Dave was a little fellow. 
His father would not be cramped, so, with what 
proved to be rare foresight, bought part of an old 
farm on Mayfield Heights. Both here and at 
Granddad's, where Dave was sent each summer, 
there was ample out-of-doors, and the lad grew 
sturdy of limb. With a flaming shock of curl- 
ing, copper hair, his eyes deepest blue, and skin 
as fair as a girl's, he was a boy for mother, 
teachers and later for maidens to spoil. But an 
attractive personality, an inherent fineness never 
left him while he was conscious, and seldom when 
he was irresponsible. 

Dave's mother was proud, proud of her suc- 
cessful husband, of the mansion and estate of 
which she was the envied mistress, proud of her 
handsome self and handsome daughters, and 



222 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

specially proud of Dave, the brightest and hand- 
somest of them all. It is a pity that she who 
so fully enjoyed the pleasures of wealth, and of 
wealth-shielded motherhood, might not have lived 
to drink to her full of the joys she loved. Pride, 
insufficient clothing, wealth, inadequate exercise, 
exposure in a raw, March bluster, defective per- 
sonal resistance, pneumonia! — and in a week, the 
life was gone. 

Dave was only fourteen, but, in face of his 
spoiling, was ready for St. Paul's, where he was 
sent the next fall. He was bright — even brilliant 
in his prep school work. Mathematics, the 
sciences and history seemed almost play for him, 
while in languages, and especially in English, he 
did an unusual amount of "not required' ' work. 

Dave made his father his hero, and for many 
years was instant in doing his will. Had the 
older man taken serious thought of his son's per- 
sonality and entered into the boy's developmental 
needs with his wonted intelligence and thorough- 
ness, the two could have grown into a closeness 
which would have made the Scott name one to 
be reckoned with in the manufacturing world. 

The father 's business was growing even beyond 
his own dreams, and he found little time to give 
his boy, whom, in fact, he saw but rarely, save 
at Christmas holidays. So it happened that Dave 
was more deeply influenced by his mother's love 
for the beautiful than by machine-shop realities; 
and the aesthetic developed in him to the exclu- 
sion of the father's practical life. 

For many years wine had been served at the 



CATASTROPHE CREATING CHARACTER 223 

family dinners. Mr. Scott drank only at home, 
and then never more than two small glasses. He 
had no respect for the man who overindulged any 
weakness. He little thought his own blood could 
be different than he. This father was a man of 
exceptional energy who had wrought miracles 
financially, and was, without question, master in 
his thoroughly organized factory. He dominated 
his surroundings. Where he willed to lead — 
whether in business circles, in the vestry, in his 
own home — the strength of his intellect, the force 
of his purpose and his quiet but tangible asser- 
tiveness were felt. He had never been balked in 
any determined course of action. 

When Dave went East to school, he possessed 
physique and health which should have made 
athletics a desire and a joy. But on both the 
baseball and football squads were a few fellows 
not choice in their use of English. In fact, even 
at this excellent church-school, these exceptions 
did considerable " cussing.' ' Dave's mother and 
sisters were fastidious, and Dave found himself, 
even at fourteen, resenting coarseness. He, there- 
fore, chose the "nice fellows' ' as associates, and 
made friends to his liking in books. We must not 
think of him as "prissy" or snobbish, but he dis- 
tinctly disliked crudity however expressed, and 
this dislike grew and was strengthened by his in- 
creasing devotion to the aesthetic. Otherwise, 
Dave's prep school years were those of an un- 
usually fine fellow, whose mind promised both 
brilliance and strength. Sadly, during these vital 
years, Dave had no mature counselor; no strong 



224 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

character was sufficiently close to sense his needs 
and court his confidence. So some of the proclivi- 
ties of his early home influence persisted and de- 
veloped, which normally should have been dis- 
placed by others standing for oncoming manhood. 
College life, unfortunately, but increased his op- 
portunities to indulge his weaknesses, and his 
three years at Yale found him a dependable 
member of a refined fast-set. With his unusual 
mind — giving no time to athletics — there were 
many idle hours at his disposal. He now discov- 
ered that he liked cigarettes which his father held 
in supreme contempt, while, from time to time, a 
quiet wine-supper with a select few, where spirits 
blended so finely when mellowed by champagne, 
stood for the acme of social pleasure. Dave could 
not carry much liquor and mellowed early, and 
rather soon slipped quietly under the table, to be 
told the next day most of the snappy toasts and 
stories the other fellows had contributed to the oc- 
casion. These entertainments soon forced Dave 
to overdraw his allowance. A business-like letter 
asking explanations came from his father, and this 
was followed by a peremptory command that he 
live within his already " ample remittance." Fa- 
ther and son had never been companions, and here 
the boy's devotion deserted, and a growing es- 
trangement began. Dave, knowing his father's 
wealth, resented his lack of liberality, and he knew 
him too well to protest. For three months he 
heeded parental injunction; then a trip to New 
York to grand opera. Entertainment accepted 
must be returned. Another wine-supper, paid for 






CATASTROPHE CREATING CHARACTER 225 

by a draft on his father — and family warfare was 
on! The draft was paid — the family credit must 
not be questioned, but a house was divided against 
itself, and the letter David sent Dave left a trail 
of blue smoke. It left also a reckless, rebellious 
son. 

Adelaide Foster's grandfather was wealthy. 
Her mother had suited her own taste — not her 
parents' — when she married attractive Fred 
Foster. The grandfather dallied too often with 
the "bucket-shop" before he forgave his foolish 
child, and when he came to his better paternal self, 
he hadn't much to leave his little granddaughter. 
But Adelaide made much of her little, and spent 
two very developing years at Barnard. 

Dave and Adelaide met on terms artistic which 
were most satisfying to them both. Dave had 
made good junior marks in spite of his inoffensive 
sprees and conflicts with his father. He was in 
many ways Adelaide 's superior, but she gave him 
a large companionship in things beautiful, and 
worshiped at his feet in questions profound. 
His father had ignored, or failed to notice, Dave's 
references to the young lady — so there was a little 
wedding-ceremony with four witnesses, an almost 
impulsive wedding. The elder Scott was not ex- 
pecting this flank-movement, but family pride 
again helped Dave out, and a liberal check fol- 
lowed the stiff telegram of "best wishes." 

Six months the young folks spent abroad. 
The beautiful in nature and art which Europe 
offered blended into their honeymoon. The last 
wedding-gift dollar had been spent when they re- 



226 OUE NERVOUS FRIENDS 

turned to East Eest, the paternal mansion in 
Cleveland. Two evenings later Mr. Scott called 
his son into the library. It was time to reassert 
his sovereignty. This, too, was business; so it 
was curt and direct. "Well, sir, I trust you have 
sown your wild oats. You have married. It is 
high time you settled down. I shall give you and 
Adelaide a home with us, or, if you prefer to live 
elsewhere, one hundred dollars a month for living 
expenses. This, mark you, is my gift to her. 
You don't earn a cent of it. You will have to 
start in the business at the bottom. You may 
choose the shops or the office. You will be paid 
what you earn. I hope you will make good. 
You are capable. Good-night. ' ' 

Dave chose the office. The shops were "ugly." 
Unhappily, much of the good, the useful and the 
necessary was being classed as "ugly" in this 
young aesthete's mind, and worse, he was finding 
himself uncomfortable in the presence of an in- 
creasing number of normal, even practically es- 
sential conditions. This gifted and promising 
young man was at odds with reality. He refused 
to accept reality as real. For him in beauty of 
line and color and sound, in beauty of thought and 
expression, only, was the truth. He suffered in 
other surroundings. He had become aesthetically 
hypersensitive. And of all reality's ruthlessness, 
what was less tolerable than monotony! What 
less capable of leading a man to the heights than 
the eternal grind of the office? 

Even Adelaide and the baby bored him at 
times. Young Scott could do anything well to 



CATASTROPHE CREATING CHARACTER 227 

which he gave effort. And his father was consid- 
ering giving him a raise, when at the end of six 
months he disappeared. The second day after, 
the distraught wife received a message from New 
York. He was all right, and wonld be home next 
week. The father, however, had to honor another 
draft before his son could square accounts and 
purchase a return ticket. This was the first of his 
retreats from the grim battle-front of reality. 
Six months seemed the limit of his capacity to 
face a work-a-day life. He read much, and of the 
best. He took up Italian alone and soon read it 
easily. When at home his chief excesses were 
books — but the Scott table was amply supplied, 
and in view of his inactive physical habits we 
realize that Dave was a high liver. 

Adelaide had proven a most dutiful daughter- 
in-law, and with the baby long kept the heads- 
man's ax from descending. But even their re- 
straining power had its limitations. The irk of 
that "godless" office was being more and more 
poorly met by Dave. Five times during the 
fourth year he took ungranted periods of relaxa- 
tion. The last time the usual draft was not paid. 
He unwisely signed a check, badly overdrawing 
his private account. His father seemed waiting 
for such an opportunity, and took drastic action. 
Under an old law, he had his son apprehended 
as a spendthrift, and so adjudged, deprived of 
his rights and made ward of a guardian. A young 
physician was made deputy in charge of his per- 
son — a man chosen, apparently, with much care. 
It was to be his business to teach this wealthy 



228 OUE NERVOUS FRIENDS 

man's son to work with his hands and to live on 
a stipulated sum. There is no question that im- 
mediate good followed these aggressive tactics, 
and in the personality of his companion-guardian 
he found much that was wholesome. A sturdy 
character was the doctor, who had fought his way 
through poverty to a liberal education, and was 
entering a special study of nervous disorders. 
His good theoretical training was planted in a 
rich soil of common-sense. For three months 
they worked on a farm, shoulder to shoulder. 
The two men became friends, a most helpful 
friendship for Dave, whose admiration for the 
young doctor had proven a path which led him, 
for the first time, to a realization of the hidden 
beauties in a life of overcoming, and this lies 
close to the nobility of the love of work. 

Dave was accepting his need for the bitter 
medicine which was being administered. He had 
forgiven Adelaide who sided with his father and, 
for the first time, had written, acknowledging 
some of his past failures. He wanted some books. 
He needed clothes. The orders given the doctor 
had been rigid as to spending-money and diver- 
sions. The determined father disapproved the ex- 
pense account. Another man was sent to relieve 
the doctor-companion — a man who could be de- 
pended upon to carry out the letter of the father's 
law. Eebellion, fierce — and it seemed, righteous — 
flamed forth in Dave Scott's soul. He was doing 
his best. He was working as he never had worked 
before. He had seen his need — he had the vision 
of self-mastery. All this, and more he had 



CATASTROPHE CREATING CHARACTER 229 

seriously confided to the man his father, through 
the court, had placed over him. Without a word 
of explanation he was again to be turned over to 
the custody of a stranger. Was he a child or a 
chattel? Was he mentally irresponsible that he 
should be thus transferred from one hand to an- 
other without a hearing? He wired his protests, 
and received in return an assurance that he would 
accept his new custodian or be cut off without a 
cent. In that hour the real character of David 
Scott was born. He consulted an attorney and 
learned the limited power of his guardians. Out- 
side of Ohio he was legally free. He pawned 
some of his few belongings. Adelaide and the 
child were financially cared for. Over night he 
left the State. He would be a man, penniless, 
rather than the chattel-son of a millionaire! 

The United States had just entered the Great 
War. The Marines were being recruited every- 
where for "early over-seas service,' ' and Dave 
Scott, the aesthetic, volunteered as a "buck- 
private." Few got over as fast as they wished. 
It was six months for Dave at Paris Island. 
There were few in the ranks of his mental ability, 
and physically he became as hard as the toughest. 
He was soon a corporal and later a sergeant. 
And he worked. He met the roughest of camp 
duties, at first with set jaw and revolting senses, 
later with a grim smile; finally, and then the 
emancipation, with a sense of the closeness of 
man to man in mankind's work. And the men 
began turning to him, and as he sweated with them 
he learned to discern the manliness in the crudest 



230 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

of them. He went across at the end of six 
months, to France. He was a replacement in the 
Sixth. 

• The French line had been beaten thin as gold- 
foil. If it broke, Paris was at the mercy of the 
Hun. Then eight thousand of Uncle Sam's 
Marines were thrown in where the line was thin- 
nest and the pressure heaviest. Sharp-shooters, 
expert marksmen, were most of them. The enemy 
was now in the open. They had not before met 
riflemen who boldly stood up and coolly killed 
at one thousand yards. Crested German helmets 
made superb targets, and the officers bit the dust 
disastrously. At the end of three days, six thou- 
sand of these eight thousand Marines were dead 
or casuals. But the tide of the Great War was 
turned — and Dave Scott was one of the immortals 
who forced the flood back upon the Ehine. What 
miracle was it that shielded that ever-smiling white 
face, crowned with its flaming shock, from the 
storm of lead and death? With the fate of nations 
trembling in the balance, who can know the part 
his blue eyes, now true as steel, played in the great 
decision as, hour after hour with deadly precision, 
he turned his hand to slaughter? Five times the 
gun he was using became too hot and was re- 
placed by that of a dead comrade. After those 
three days at Chateau-Thierry, no mortal could 
question that Dave Scott had forsworn aes- 
thetics; that he was a demon of reality. Later 
he saw service on the Champagne front, and then 
was invalided home. 

It was a chastened father, a magnificently 



CATASTROPHE CREATING CHARACTER 231 

proud father, who was the first to greet him. For 
the time he was unable to put into words the 
honor he had for the son whom, so few months 
before, he considered worthless. "It's all past 
now, Dave. That past we won't speak of again. 
I've arranged for your discharge. You'll be 
home to stay, inside of a month." 

Dave's answer, probably more than any act in 
battle, proved that his character had been remade : 
"No, Father, I have enlisted for four years. I 
belong to the Marines till my time is up. I owe 
it to you, to Adelaide, to the boy, to myself, to 
prove that I can be the man in peace that I have 
tried to be in training-camp and in France. I 
know I can face reality when spurred by excite- 
ment. I have yet to prove that I can face the 
monotony of two years and a half of routine 
service. ' ' 



CHAPTER XXn 
FINDING THE VICTORIOUS SELF 

The victorious soul counts life as a gift which, 
far from growing darker and more dreary as the 
sun falls into the west, may daily become more 
rich and beautiful and worthy. To the soul vic- 
torious our span of years is not menaced by mis- 
fortune and misery, is not degraded by bitterness, 
discord and hatred, but hourly thrills with the 
realization that the worst which life may bring 
but challenges the divine within to masterful as- 
sertion. And the soul victorious has risen un- 
scathed — glorified — above every attack of fate. 

Mrs. Herman Judson was a sight to make the 
gods weep. With features more than usually at- 
tractive, softened by a halo of waving, silvery 
hair, she was but a mushy bog of misery. It was 
three p. m. ; she had just been carried downstairs, 
and in spite of the usual host of apprehension, with 
some added new ones for to-day, no slightest ac- 
cident had marred the perilous trip from her 
front bedroom to the living-room below; still 
everything and everybody, save old Dr. Bond, 
was in a flutter. Tension and apprehension 
marked the faces and actions of all. Not till the 
last of six propping, easing, supporting pillows 
had been adjusted; till hot- water bottles were in 

232 



FINDING THE VICTORIOUS SELF 233 

near contact with two "freezing" ankles;, till her 
shoulder-shawl had been taken off — a twist 
straightened out — and accurately replaced; till 
the room, already ventilated to a preordered 
nicety of temperature, had a door opened and 
both windows closed ; not till the screen had been 
moved twice to modify the " glare' ' of the lights, 
and to protect from possible ' i draughts ' ' ; not until 
the "Sunset Scene from Venice' ' had been turned 
face to the wall so the reflection from its glass 
wouldn't make her "eyes run cold water"; and 
finally, not until ten drops from the bottle labeled 
"For spinal pain" had been taken, and five 
minutes spent by her niece, fanning so very gently, 
"so as not to smother my breath" — not till this 
formidable contribution to the pitiful slavery of 
petted sensations had been slavishly offered, could 
the invalid find strength to greet her childhood 
playmate, quiet, observing, charitable Dr. Willard 
Bond. 

Twice a day for many months the household 
held its breath while this moving-down, and later 
moving-back (and to-day's was an uncomplicated, 
unusually peaceable one), was being accomplished. 
"Held its breath," is really not quite accurate, 
for Ben, the colored butler, and 'Lissie, the colored 
cook, found much reason for strenuous respira- 
tion, as Mrs. Judson and her rocker, with pillows, 
blankets and the everpresent afghan, weighed 
two hundred and eight pounds — one hundred and 
eighty pounds of woman, twenty-eight pounds of 
accessories ! And Ben and 'Lissie were the ones 
who logically deserved fanning and attention to 



234 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

ventilation, especially after the seven p. m. trip 
back. 

And they were always so solemn, so tensifyingly 
solemn, these risky journeys up and down. The 
niece, Irma, carried the hot-water bottles, the extra 
blankets and the fan. The nurse had the medi- 
cine-box and a small tray with water-glasses — for 
when things went wrong, the cavalcade must stop 
and some of the "Heart-weakness drops' ' be 
given, or some whiffs taken from the pungent 
"For tightness of breath' ' bottle, before further 
progress was safe. 

Mrs. Judson knew her symptoms so well. 
There were eighteen of special importance; and 
Dr. Cummings, the successful young surgeon, a 
far-away relative-by-marriage, had, in all serious- 
ness, prescribed eighteen lotions, elixirs, powders, 
pills and potions, to meet each of the eighteen 
varied symptoms. Nine months ago this progres- 
sively developing invalidism of twenty years had 
culminated in what Dr. Cummings suspected to 
be a severe gall-stone attack. A few days later, 
when his sensitive patient was measurably re- 
lieved, he had told her his fears and suggested a 
possible operation. Within two minutes Mrs. 
Judson was faint and chilling. Since then the 
doctor, the nurse, the niece, not to forget Ben and 
'Lissie, had labored without ceasing to prevent 
a return of the "awful gall-stone attacks," and, 
with the Lord's help, to get Mrs. Judson "strong 
enough for an operation." But progress was dis- 
hearteningly slow. Every mention of "opera- 
tion" seemed to make their patient worse. And 



FINDING THE VICTORIOUS SELF 235 

now for over eight months she had not walked a 
step and had been an hourly care. 

For the first time since the beginning of the 
gall-stone trouble, Dr. Cummings was going to be 
away for two weeks, and he, with Dr. Bond, had 
witnessed the downstairs trip in anticipation 
of a conference. Dr. Bond lived but two doors 
away, and as he had retired from active practice, 
could always respond to a call if needed. More- 
over, it had been discovered that he was a 
neighbor-playmate of Mrs. Judson during her 
girlhood. He had but recently come to Detroit 
from their old home in Charlestown, under the 
shadow of Bunker Hill monument, about which 
they had often played as children. Dr. Bond had 
lived there alone for many years following his 
wife's death, and had now come to make a home 
with his successful son. He was giving his time, 
and he felt the best year of his life, writing a 
series of chapters on "Our Nerves and Our 
Morals." He had never been a specialist, claim- 
ing only to be a family-doctor. But for over 
thirty years he had been ministering most wisely 
to the ills of the soul as well as of the body. A 
large, compelling sympathy he gave his patients. 
He saw their ills. He felt their fears. He 
sensed their sorrows. He understood their weak- 
nesses. He looked beyond the manifest ailments 
of flesh and blood. His fine discernment revealed 
the obscure sicknesses which affect hearts and 
souls. And his rational sympathies penetrated 
with the deftness and beneficence of the surgeon's 
scalpel. He stood for that type of man whom 



236 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

God has raised up to help frail and needing 
human-kind in body, mind and spirit. 

' ' Sixty years is a long time to pass between 
meetings, isn't it?" said Dr. Bond after Mrs. Jud- 
son 's needs had severally and successfully been 
humored, and she was able to note and recognize 
the old-new doctor's presence and offer a plump, 
tremulous hand in greeting. 

"You don't know how nearly you have missed 
seeing me," she replied. "I have been on the 
verge for months, but Dr. Cummings has been able 
to pull me through. You see, he knows all my 
dangers, and has given me the best medicines that 
medical science knows for each of them. Have 
him tell you about it, Dr. Bond. I do hope noth- 
ing will happen while he's gone." 

Dr. Bond replied that he was sure, with Dr. 
Cummings ' advice and the nurse 's and the niece 's 
help and understanding, there would be no 
danger; that he was so near he would come in 
each afternoon and they could talk about the old 
days and the old childhood friends around 
Boston. "I hope so," Mrs. Judson replied, "but 
you know I can't talk long. But do come every 
day. I'll feel safer, I'm sure. And promise me 
that you won't delay a minute if I send for you 
for my gall-stones. If they get started, I die a 
thousand deaths. ' ' 

"I shall come at once, you may be sure, but tell 
the nurse to put those gall-stones to bed at ten 
p. m., because you and I are too old to be spreeing 
around during sleeping hours." 

But Mrs. Judson couldn't find a ghost of a smile 



FINDING THE VICTORIOUS SELF 237 

for this pleasantry. In fact, her look of alarm 
caused Dr. Bond to add, " Don't fear, Mrs. Jud- 
son, I can still dress in five minutes and will 
promise faithfully to come at any hour." 

The two physicians left the room together. 
Thirty-five and sixty-five they were, both earnest, 
capable, honest men, one a master of modern medi- 
cal science, the elder a thoroughly equipped physi- 
cian, and a deep student of humanity. 

' ' I am very glad you are going to see my aunt. 
For months I have wished to call in a consultant, 
but she has always refused. I know much of her 
trouble is nervous, and you know how little time 
most of us have to study nervousness, and I am 
sure you will see clearly much which has been 
rather hazy to me. I think you were conceal- 
ing a laugh when they gave her the ' Spinal-pain 
drops,' and frankly, there is very little that has 
much strength in all those pills and powders I've 
given her. I have learned that she gets along 
very well much of the time when she can antici- 
pate her symptoms and prescribe for herself. 
In fact, it's about all that the poor old lady has 
to do these days. I am not absolutely sure, 
either, about those gall-stones. The symptoms 
are not classic, but she certainly does suffer, 
and I have had to give her pretty heavy doses 
of morphin several times, and then she's wretch- 
edly sick for some days. Believe me, Doctor, I do 
not feel competent in her case. It's not my line. 
Find out all you can. Do whatever you feel is 
best, and you may depend upon my endorsement 
of any changes you may see fit to make. It 



238 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

will be a God's mercy if you can win her 
confidence and share the burden of her treatment 
with me. Of course, she's too old to get well, and 
I'm afraid if we ever have to operate, there will 
be a funeral." 

Dr. Bond thanked the younger man heartily. 
He felt his earnestness and honesty, and saw 
that he had done all he knew to help his 
patient. 

That evening the old doctor's mind spanned the 
gulf of nearly two generations. He was again a 
little fellow, and Rhoda Burrows lived across the 
street. Their mothers were friends; they were 
playmates. And through the years he had 
treasured her happy, sunny, beautiful face as an 
ideal of girlhood perfection. She was older than 
he, and how she had "big sistered" and 
"mothered" him! How his little hurts and sor- 
rows had fled before her laughter and caresses! 
Hundreds and thousands had touched his inner 
life since Rhoda moved West with her parents, 
but that gleam of girlhood had remained etched 
with the clearness of a miniature upon his mind, 
undimmed by the crowding, jostling throng. 
Rhoda Burrows, the fairy-child of his boyish 
dreams, and Mrs. Herman Judson, the acme of 
self -pitying and self -petting selfishness, the same ! 
It seemed impossible — yet — and here his big 
charity spoke — all of the choice spirit of the girl 
cannot have been swallowed up in the sordidness 
of a selfish, old age. And that same charity 
breathed upon the physician's soul till his help- 
ful and hopeful interest for this pitiful wreck of 



FINDING THE VICTORIOUS SELF 239 

wretchedness was aglow. He would give her his 
best, and he knew that best sometimes wrought 
wonders. 

Dr. Bond first had a conference with the niece, 
who was pure gold, and who accepted each 
of her aunt 's complaints as a warning which could 
but disastrously be ignored. But, and this was 
good to know, he learned that when Aunt Ehoda 
was better, she was kind and good-hearted. From 
the nurse, the doctor learned other details, and 
what was of special significance, that the in- 
valid's appetite rarely flagged — then he saw a rea- 
son for her one hundred and eighty pounds ; and 
when he learned that rare broiled beef, or rare 
roast beef was served the physically inert patient 
and bountifully eaten twice each day, his under- 
standing became active. 

Mrs. Judson's presiding fates were good to her 
the next week. She would have denied it with 
the sum total of her vehemence, which incidentally 
was some sum, but Dr. Bond says it is true. It 
was after eleven, one night. He was just finish- 
ing his day's writing. It was the nurse 'phoning. 
"I am truly sorry to call you, Doctor, but I've 
given three doses of the gall-stone medicine, and 
it always relieves unless a real attack is on. I 
am sure she is suffering." The old doctor was 
not surprised. The patient had been doing un- 
usually well for two or three days and had spoken 
particularly of her better appetite. The doctor's 
first query, upon reaching the house, related to the 
details of the evening meal. "No, there was no 
steak to-night. We had chicken-salad. 'Lissie 



240 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

had tried herself; Mrs. Judson was hungry and 
asked for a second portion.' ' 

Gently, carefully, thoroughly, the suffering 
woman was examined. There was no doubt that 
her pain was severe, but in conclusion, the old 
doctor did doubt decidedly the presence of 
gall-stones. He believed it to be duodenal colic. 
"I don't wish to give you a hypodermic, ' ' he told 
her. "I know it will relieve you quickly to-night, 
but it will set you back several days. I am go- 
ing to ask you to be patient, and to take an un- 
pleasant dose, and I think the nurse and I can 
relieve you completely within two hours, and you 
will be little the worse ; in fact, you may be better, 
to-morrow." 

"She won't take it," the nurse said, as the 
doctor called her from the room. ' * Dr. Cummings 
suggested it once, and she held it against him for 
weeks. She said her mother whipped her when 
she was a child and then couldn't make her swal- 
low it." 

"You will fix it as I tell you, then bring it in to 
me, ' ' the Doctor replied. Dubiously the nurse car- 
ried out the order. She thanked her stars that the 
Doctor, not she, was to give it. Yet it looked very 
nice when she brought it into the sick-room, redo- 
lent with lemon and peppermint. 

"Think of this, Mrs. Judson, as your best friend 
to-night in all the realm of medicine. Take it 
with my belief that it is to prove the cure of your 
gall-stones. It is not nice. It's not easy to swal- 
low. Don't sip it. Take it all at a gulp." 

But she sipped it. And she screamed, not a 



FINDING THE VICTORIOUS SELF 241 

scream of pain, but of rage, of violated dignity — 
insulted — outraged. "Castor oil! I'll die first. 
Why, that stuff isn't fit to give an animal. Are 
you trying to kill me ? Oh, you old fogy ! I knew 
something would happen when I let Dr. Cummings 
go. I wouldn 't give such stuff to a sick cat. ' ' 

All symptoms of pain seemed gone for the time. 
Generous as he was, the old Doctor stiffened in the 
face of her tirade, yet with dignity, replied: "You 
are refusing a real help. I speak from long ex- 
perience. I can give you nothing else till you have 
taken this." 

1 1 Then go ! " she snapped out. But the ' * o-o-o ' ' 
was prolonged into a wail as a particularly perni- 
cious jab in the midst of her duodenum — "a provi- 
dential thrust," Dr. Bond said — doubled her up, 
if rotundity can be said to double. The Doctor 
was obdurate. Colic was trumps — and won! 
The first dose did not meet a hospitable reception, 
but another was promptly given. Then other 
nicer things were done and the Doctor was home 
and the patient comfortably asleep soon after one. 
The next day's conference between the two was 
strictly professional, nor was there much thawing 
till the third day after. Mrs. Judson's ire must 
have been of Celtic origin, for it was not long- 
lived. 

The following Sunday afternoon seemed propi- 
tious for the beneficent work of the soul-doctor. 
The whole family had told Mrs. Judson how much 
better she was looking — the Doctor had kept her 
on soft diet since her attack. "You have told me 
so little of yourself," said Dr. Bond. "I only 



242 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

know that sorrow came." He then told her of 
herself as she had lived in his memory. She had 
forgotten the beauty of her childhood. The Doc- 
tor brought back the picture in tones which could 
stand only for high reverence. She felt he wanted 
to know, and she knew she wanted to tell. So for 
two hours they sat, hand in hand, as in their child- 
hood, and he heard of her father 's moderate suc- 
cess as an editorial writer after he came West 
when she was nine, of their comfortable home in 
Detroit, how well she had done in school, of her 
early ability as a teacher, of her election as super- 
intendent of the St. Claire Academy for Girls when 
she was twenty-five, of her marriage to Herman 
Judson, a childless widower fifteen years her 
senior, before she was thirty, of their very happy 
home, of her own little girl and how she grew into 
womanhood, of her daughter's marriage, and then 
of her little girl, and how wonderful it was to be a 
grandmother before she was fifty ! 

Then it was ' ' Nurse, the bottle for ' Tightness of 
breath ' ... I don't see how I can tell it. You 
can 't know. Nobody can. It was never the same 
for any one else. The train went through a 
bridge, and they were all three killed, my husband, 
my only girl, the darling grandchild. God turned 
His face away that night they brought them home. 
I've never seen Him since. I've never looked for 
Him since. I don't see how I kept my mind 
Something snapped inside. I couldn't go to the 
funeral, and while I brought my sister home to 
live with me, and after she died, have done the best 
I could to raise Irma, her child, and Irma 's tried, 



FINDING THE VICTORIOUS SELF 243 

I know, to be a daughter to me, yet Pve always 
been so lonely, so wretched and miserable and sick. 
I haven't anything to live for — but I'm afraid to 
die." 

Then began the cheapening catalog of the 
nearly twenty years of illness, her weak and sen- 
sitive spine, her constant difficulty in breathing, 
and the eternal thumping of her heart. And on 
and on, the list so old to Dr. Bond's ears, so com- 
monly heard in the experience of helpers of the 
nervous sick — as usual to the nerve-specialist as 
the inflamed appendix to the modern surgeon — 
yet in the mind of every nerve-sufferer so unique, 
so individual, so different. But of all the long, 
two-hour story, one short sentence stood out, elo- 
quent in the doctor's mind, "I haven't anything 
to live for, yet I'm afraid to die." He gently 
thanked her. He had felt with her in the recital 
of her great sorrow, and she knew he had suffered 
in her suffering. "You can get well. You can 
find something worth living for, and you can lose 
your fear of death, if you will pay the price." 
For the moment she misunderstood. 

"Why, Doctor, I would gladly give thousands 
for health." 

Again, gently, "Your dollars are worthless. 
You are poor in the gold which will buy your 
restoration. I shall tell you about it Wednesday 
if you want to know." 

On both Monday and Tuesday visits her 
curiosity prompted her to refer to the great cure 
Dr. Bond mentioned. But it was Wednesday 
afternoon before he spoke seriously. 



244 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

"You were very ill last week — such illnesses 
have frequently proved fatal to life, when 
ignorantly managed. But as I see you to-day, 
knowing your radiant childhood, and the good 
fortune which was yours for years, and the heart- 
tearing shock which came so cruelly, I see a sick- 
ness more dire and fatal than any for which you 
have ever yet been treated. The beauty and youth 
and charity of your spirit are mortally ill. I 
see your soul an emaciated remnant, a skeleton of 
its possible self. It threatens to die before your 
body. Selfish sorrow has infected and permeated 
your once lovely, better self, and to-day you have 
no true goodness left. You are good to others 
that they may be better to you. You are gen- 
erous with your means — a generosity which costs 
you no sacrifice, that you may buy back the gen- 
erosity without which you could not live. Four 
useful lives are emptying the best of their 
strength, ability and love into years of service 
that you may know a poor, low-grade, selfish, 
physical comfort. You are taking from them and 
others consideration, self-sacrifice, loyalty, un- 
stinted devotion, and giving in return only un- 
grateful dollars. You are rich in these, but 
poorer than Lazarus in the least of the qualities 
which make life worth living a day, which keep 
Death from being a haunting terror. You have 
not one physical symptom of your endless cata- 
log which cannot be removed if you meet 
the blessings half-way which discomforts 
offer." 

It couldn't have been what Dr. Bond said — it 



FINDING THE VICTORIOUS SELF 245 

must have been what he was himself that made 
those unwelcome, humiliating truths carry con- 
viction, win confidence, and waken hope. Pos- 
sibly his last sentence helped her decision — his 
serious confidence in his ability to remove those 
terrifying, everimpending threats of physical an- 
guish. At any rate, she gave her promise — for 
six months she would implicitly follow his instruc- 
tion, with the understanding that if she did not see 
herself better at the end of four months, she was 
to be released from further treatment. 

It would be a long story, a story of remarkable 
medical finesse; it would be describing the work 
of an artist — for such was Dr. Bond as he turned 
bodies from sickness to health and souls from 
perdition to salvation. But victory came! In 
six weeks, the invalid was walking. In six 
months she was walking three miles a day. She 
was eating, bathing, sleeping and working more 
like a woman under sixty than one nearing 
seventy. She spent the summer with the 
doctor's people in their bungalow on Lake Huron. 
She now gave of her means thoughtfully, with 
growing unselfishness, and soon after she began 
to look up and out there came the peace within, 
so long a stranger. And she told Dr. Bond, 
simply, one day, that God had come back to her, 
and he as simply replied: "You have come back 
to God." 

That winter, Dr. Bond spent in the East. One 
day the expressman brought a package — some 
books he had always loved, in remarkable bind- 
ings, and this note : 






246 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

"My best Friend: 

' l To-day I am seventy. I haven 't been so young since 
sorrow was sent to prove me, nor more happy since I 
nursed your hurt arm when we were children. I walked 
down town, two miles you know, and back, and a mile in 
the stores, I am sure, to find these books you love, in 
bindings worthy your better enjoyment of them. All 
that you have promised has come to me. God bless 
your 



CHAPTEE XXni 
THE TBITJMPH OF HARMONY 

When man "conceives his superpower, his 
miraculous power to meet disaster, and in it to 
find profit ; to face defeat after defeat and therein 
acquire faith in his own permanence; to live for 
years within a frail, defective body, with a mind 
unable to respond to the promptings of ambition 
and inspiration, and thereby take on the greatness 
of gentleness — the conviction comes clear, a con- 
viction which will not comfortably stay put aside, 
that life is intended to develop a noble self. ,, 

What could be more beautiful to senses that 
thrill with love than this pink-cheeked, azure-eyed 
babe, whose golden ringlets promise the glorious 
crown, the unfading beauty of her womanhood! 
She was hardly a month old, yet she seemed to 
understand — Mammy Lou said she did — that she 
must look her "beau'fulest"; so when her father 
came and bent over her little crib, she smiled, 
then coyly ducked her wobbly head, to smile again 
at Mother, the dear mother who only to-day had 
been allowed by the doctor to sit up for an hour. 
Mammy Lou must have been right, for there 
Baby lay playing with her fingers and the disap- 
pointed pink ribbons of her booties, while, now 
and then, when the discussion was specially 

247 



248 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

serious, she would look soberly at her earnest- 
faced parents till they both would notice, and 
laugh. Then her little understanding smile — and 
some more play. It was an important conference. 
Considerations affecting Baby's future were in the 
balance, and, as she gave such perfect attention 
and never interrupted, and insisted on every one 
keeping good-natured, Mammy Lou's assertion 
that "Dat lil' sweetness 'stood every word her 
pa an' ma said. She knew dey's findin' her a 
name," cannot be successfully disputed. 

The Southards had been married twelve years. 
Georgia was eight, and Etta five. It must be a 
boy — one who would pass on the Southard name 
and traditions. The first Earl of Minto had con- 
tributed some nobleness of blood to the Southard 
stock, and the father had set his heart on a boy 
who should feel the double inspiration of " Minto 
Southard," to help make him fine and great. 

A "girl"! And business took the father away 
for a fortnight. It was rumored that he drowned 
his disappointment in Charleston — but not in the 
Bay. He did not fully realize that the brave wife 
was gravely ill, until his return. Then he was de- 
voted and tender. They had made no plans for 
a little girl; so she was nearly a month old and 
was still being called "Sweetness" by Mammy 
Lou, and "The Baby" by others, and to-day, while 
Mother first sat up, her name was to be decided. 

"Why, Father, dear, no girl was ever called 
that. I think it would be all right for a boy, but 
she's such a dainty little thing, and I'm sure it 
will always seem odd to her." 



THE TRIUMPH OF HARMONY 249 

"What would you like better, Mater? I don't 
wish to contend or to be unduly insistent, but 
you know I have looked forward to having the 
Earl's name in the family, and, personally, I 
think it has the attraction of uniqueness, as well 
as the flavor of distinction. Then, you remember, 
you suggested the names for the other girls. I 
know you are thinking of her future and fear an 
odd name may make her unhappy, some time. 
But we can, we should, teach her to be proud 
of so distinguished an association. My personal 
desire is very strong, and I can't think of any 
other name which will satisfy me nearly as well. ,, 

Just then Baby looked at her mother, smiled 
and gurgled something which was intelligible to 
mother-ears, and the wife 's hand slipped into the 
husband's, and the baby was named Minta 
Southard. 

Where could a new baby have found a more per- 
fect setting for her childhood and girlhood! 
The plantation lay on both sides of the Catawba 
Eiver — fresh and crystal clear those days, as it 
sped down from mountains to sea — fertile, fruit- 
ful acres there were, which never failed to bring 
forth manyfold. Three times in as many gen- 
erations, the Manor House, as the rambling 
southern home had always been called, had been 
enlarged, but nothing was ever done which less- 
ened the dignity lent by its fine colonial portico, 
the artistic columns of which could be seen miles 
down the river-road. The Manor House was 
good to see in its rare setting of stately water- 
oaks, now in their full maturity. 



250 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

For four years little Mint a thrived and gave 
promise of bringing many joys to this home which 
knew no shadow but the father's periodic "busi- 
ness trips" to Charleston. Mammy Lou was her 
slave, and even Georgia, who had her own way 
so much that she was far from unselfish, asked, 
at times, to "take care" of her dainty sister, and 
would let her play with some of her things with- 
out protest. Then the fever! "Typhoid," the 
doctor said, "affecting her brain." Father, 
Mother and Mammy Lou took turns being with 
her those long, hot weeks, when it forgot to rain 
and the refreshing sea-breeze was cruelly withheld. 
Doctors from Charlotte, doctors from Charleston 
and doctors from Atlanta came, to look grave, to 
shake their learned heads, and to sadly leave, 
offering no hopeful change in treatment. The 
fever was prolonged over five weeks, and the child 
seemed more lifeless each day as it left her 
drained and damaged — drained and damaged for 
life it proved. So slowly her shadowy form 
gained, that a single week was too short to evi- 
dence improvement. Six months, and she was not 
yet walking. One year, and she was still fragile. 
Then, in a month, normal childhood apparently 
slipped back, and she began to play and be merry. 

Of course "Sweetness" was spoiled — and an 
autocrat she was, her mother, only, denying her- 
self the indulgence of being her subject. Mother, 
however, was lovingly tactful, and exercised the 
discipline she believed necessary for her child's 
good most wisely. And Mother's memory has 
ever remained a hallowed one. Mammy Lou did 



THE TRIUMPH OF HARMONY 251 

much to discredit all of the mother 's conscientious 
care. For so long the poor child "couldn't eat 
nothin'," and when at last Minta's appetite re- 
turned, her loving black nurse would give her 
anything she wanted, and if the fever hadn't 
hopelessly damaged the little one's digestive 
glands, Mammy Lou's unfailing "HP snacks for 
her honey-chile" would have completed the 
wreckage. At first the trouble was not noticed. 
Minta rarely spoke of suffering. She would be 
found lying with her face from the light, and 
would always reply that she was "tired play- 
ing," sometimes only, "my head hurts." The 
parents thought she did play too hard, for she 
was developing into an intense little miss, who 
entered into whatever she was doing with more 
than blue-eyed zest, those blue eyes which snapped 
blue-black when her will was crossed. 

The girls all had their early teaching at home, 
so when Minta was thirteen, Miss Allison came 
from Washington to spend a year, as tutor, to 
prepare her for school the next fall. That was 
the year Georgia ran away. She had been visit- 
ing in Savannah several weeks, when she disap- 
peared, leaving a hurried note to her friends, 
stating that she would write her people from New 
York, and begging them not to worry about her. 
The note from New York was thoughtlessly 
written. She was probably frightened by what 
she had done. She was safe in New York with 
Eandolph, where they would be for ten days. 
She was sorry. Would they forgive her? She 
knew she had done wrong. Write her at 



252 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

East Fourteenth Street, where they were board- 
ing. 

The outraged father called the two girls and 
their mother into his office, and read them 
Georgia's letter, then tore it into bits. "Your 
sister's name is never to be mentioned again in 
this house. She has brought the first dishonor 
to the Southard name in America. She is dis- 
owned, and may she be swallowed up in her own 
disgrace. ' ' 

Nothing had ever so impressed Minta as her 
father's face that day. A primitive savagery 
spoke, intensified by the refinements of Cavalier 
blood. No one dared utter a word of protest. 
He was implacable as adamant, they all knew. 
Mr. Southard was never the same. Some of his 
genial tenderness was lost forever, and the family 
lived on with the unmentionable name ever before 
them, like a grave which was never to be filled. 
The father was away much more the following 
year. He never drank at home. And, after his 
death, it was found that he had gambled away 
many thousands — all of Georgia's part. Thus a 
father's pride of family met a daughter's im- 
pulse. 

The little mother, never strong, always patient 
and devoted and lovable, seemed unable to rise 
above the shame and the sorrow of it all, and could 
give less and less to Minta, who now found in 
Miss Allison and Mammy Lou her most potent 
influences. Miss Allison was worthy the responsi- 
bility and probably did much to decide the girl's 
future. She had studied art, and had hoped to 



THE TRIUMPH OF HARMONY 253 

spend years abroad. Financial disappointments 
had made this impossible. But her imaginative 
pupil loved the art of which she spoke so often, 
and begged to be taught to sketch. She early- 
showed unusual skill and the promise of talent; 
still the father would not consider her going North 
with Miss Allison to school. Yet the seeds had 
been sown and an artist she was to be. But the 
cost! 

Two years she spent at Converse College. 
During the second summer-vacation her father 
died, and as her mother's heart was gradually 
weakening, Minta stayed at home the following 
year. A few weeks before the dear mother 
slipped away, she talked with Minta about the 
older sister, dutifully avoiding the mention of her 
name. "I have never felt right about the way 
we treated her," she said. "Some time when you 
are older, won't you try to find her and help her?" 

The Cavalier was in the younger daughter too. 
"I certainly think she has caused unhappiness 
enough. She made our home a different place, 
and she shortened Father's life. I can't forgive 
her." 

"But, Daughter, we don't know. There may 
have been some mistake." 

Minta was decided. i ' She no longer belongs to 
the Southard family. Father was right." 

The mother did not insist, and only said, "She, 
too, is my child. She is of your blood. We 
should forgive." 

Her mother was with her but a few weeks after 
this conversation. And, within two months after 



254 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

her funeral, an attack of pneumonia robbed 
Minta's already frail body of strength which 
might have come at that developing age. Much 
of the next eighteen months she spent in bed. 
It was then decided that she consult a friend of 
her father 's, a city physician. Unfortunately, 
this ambitious surgeon had been but a con- 
vivial friend. His professional development had 
reached only the " operation' ' stage. Surgery to 
him was a panacea, and the operation, which he 
promised to be her saving, was to be her tragedy. 
She did not know till two years later that she 
had been robbed of her birthright. Her head- 
aches, far from being helped, were even worse, 
now blinding and exhausting. She at last went 
East to a world-renowned specialist who undid, 
as far as his great skill could, the damage of 
the first operation, and who, great man that he 
was, had time not only to operate but to com- 
prehend. His cultivated instincts led him di- 
rectly to an intimacy with his patient's idealisms, 
and he was one to whom every right-souled 
sufferer could trust his deepest confidence with- 
out reserve. 

"I fear, little girl, your ambitions are only for 
those of unquestioned strength. You are but a 
pigmy. Certain organs, essential to the conver- 
sion of food into energy, were injured beyond 
all repair in your first illness. Other damage 
which neither time nor skill can make good was 
inflicted by your first operation. Your eyes are 
entirely inadequate for the merciless exactions of 
a life of art. You are at best but a delicate hot- 



THE TRIUMPH OF HARMONY 255 

house plant — beyond human power to develop into 
sufficient hardiness to be transplanted into the 
world of Bohemia, or into much of any world 
save a sheltered one. You can never be more than 
a semi-invalid." 

This sentence the great doctor pronounced only 
after his own opinion had been reenforced by a 
conference of experts. And every word was true, 
as far as he and the experts had investigated. 

But there was the spirit of a Cavalier with 
which they had not reckoned. "Ill not have it 
so. Life, the life that you give me, isn't worth 
living. I shall have my two years in Europe 
with my art, if it takes all those other years you 
say I can have by saving myself." 

And she had them ! One year first in New York 
in preparation, then two years in Borne. Three 
weeks she worked; one week she suffered. And 
how wonderfully she did suffer! She had been 
warned of the danger of drug-relief. And when 
doctors came and began filling their hypodermic 
syringes, her indignation blazed up. "If that's 
all you have for me, you needn't come. I could 
give that to myself. ' ' She learned that quiet and 
darkness, and, it seemed, fasting, dulled the edge 
of the pain and shortened its duration, and that 
nothing else did as much. 

There was another art student in Borne — a fine, 
poor American who, too, was studying art be- 
cause he loved it. How they could have helped 
each other! They both knew it. It was as 
natural as life, after they had worked together 
a few months, for him to ask if she could wait 



256 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

while lie earned, and made a name. She knew 
that waiting was not necessary; that she had 
plenty for them both and that she could help him, 
as few others, to more quickly win the fame which 
he was sure to attain. And she knew, too, that 
she could not so love another — there was never a 
doubt of that. But this time love was bitterly 
cruel. It came in all its affection and beauty 
only to sear and rend. She "must not marry,' ' 
the great surgeon had told her. So gently and fa- 
therly he had said it, that she did not realize 
its full import till now. Husbandless, childless, a 
chronic, incurable sufferer, she must tread the 
wine-press alone ! 

The man had gone. She could give him no 
reason. She could not remember what she said to 
him. The world went black, and consciousness 
fled. For weeks she lay in an Italian hospital. 
Etta and her husband came, and the only rational 
words they could hear were her pleadings to be 
taken back to Dr. Kingsley. 

Somehow the trip was made. But it was 
a desperately sick girl, the mere shell of a life, 
that they returned to America. It was weeks be- 
fore she realized where she was and other weeks 
before she was able to tell Dr. Kingsley so that 
he could understand it all — not only of sorrow's 
final revelation, but this time, what she had not 
mentioned before, of Georgia — the family dis- 
grace. She did not know the wonderful power 
of Christian counsel and ideals to save from the 
so-often misinterpreted sufferings of wrong 
spiritual adjustments. She had not realized the 



THE TRIUMPH OF HARMONY 257 

healing power of the love of God expressed in the 
lives of good men and women, and how it can 
sweeten the bitterness and dissipate even the 
paralyzing loneliness of an impossible human love. 

Dr. Kingsley's eyes had welled with tears when 
she told the story of Georgia. How impellingly 
gentle was his voice when he said, " Yon '11 forgive 
her now, I know." Forgive her! What else to 
do, when he made it so noble and beautiful and 
right. So when she was strong enough, she began 
looking for the sister who had so complicated the 
years, and, through an old school-friend, traced 
her to a little flat. And it was even as her mother 
had thought. Georgia had married, "beneath 
the family,' ' she told Minta, the Georgia who was 
too proud to ever write again. She was living 
in Brooklyn, the wife of Randolph, an assistant 
engineer on an ocean steamship. And Etta came 
to visit Georgia, and a great load, a load of which 
she had, through the years, been unconscious, 
slipped away as Minta let go her enmity. "In all 
things," she said to Dr. Kingsley, "I am your 
obedient patient — all things but one. I will work, 
and I shall work. ' ' 

And she does work. No one understands how. 
Seventy-odd pounds of frailty, with eyes which 
are ever resentful of the use to which she puts 
them; with the recurrence of suffering which 
wrings every ounce of physical strength, which 
for days holds her mind writhing as on the rack, 
which tortures her to physical and mental sur- 
render, but which, through the lengthening years, 
has been impotent to daunt her regal spirit. 



258 OUR NERVOUS FRIENDS 

And she gives, gives on through the days of rela- 
tive comfort, gives of her cheer which comes from, 
no one knows where; gives, spontaneously, kind- 
ness which has multiplied her lovers, both men 
and women ; and gives of her ability which is un- 
questioned. There are a few publishers who 
know her skill. There is a touch of pathos in all 
she draws, pathos — never bitterness, never ugli- 
ness — always the breath of beauty. 

Minta Southard, hopelessly defective in what 
we call health, has triumphed through the har- 
mony of a brave adjustment to her pitiless limita- 
tions — a harmony realized by few, even though 
rich, in resource of mind, powerful, in reserve of 
body. 

Can we ignore the omnipotence of the spiritual? 



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